


Wolf Ranch

by Guede



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Aftermath of Torture, Alternate Universe - Farm/Ranch, Alternate Universe - Western, Amorality, Angst, BAMF Lydia Martin, BAMF Stiles, Comeplay, Dom/sub Undertones, F/M, Gallows Humor, Ghosts, Guilt, Intercrural Sex, M/M, Magical Stiles Stilinski, Multi, Polyamory, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Slow Build, The Weird West
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-04
Updated: 2016-03-04
Packaged: 2018-05-24 14:43:17
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 14
Words: 55,070
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6156976
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Guede/pseuds/Guede
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>At first glance, Beacon Hills seems like a terrible place to settle.  Ruled by alpha werewolves and surrounded by a haunted forest filled with outlaws, it’s not very friendly to Eastern greenhorns.  So Stiles and Lydia should fit right in.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Please note that this is intended to be more Western trope-flavored than historically accurate. To the extent that I had a time period in mind, I was thinking 1880s-90s.

“Thank God,” Lydia muttered, climbing down from the wagon. She shook the dust off her skirts, looking about the street. “I was beginning to think that I was _growing_ into that bench.”

And getting looks too, especially once she took off her bonnet and the sunlight caught fire on her hair. Beacon Hills was one of the more established towns in the area, but judging from the onlookers, it was still very much a trapping and mining outpost. Lots of rough-looking, grimy men, suddenly fumbling with their things at the sight of a skirt.

Giving Stiles some unfriendly looks too, once he’d climbed down beside Lydia. They’d only been in town a few minutes and he’d already caught at least one comment about not being able to tell which of them was the girl. Stiles suppressed his sigh and tipped said catcaller a sunny smile, and just happened to brush his coat back from his gun holster as he stretched out his arms. “Well, where to first?” he said, offering his arm to Lydia. “Hotel to find a room? Saloon for a drink?”

“Seeing as they’re one and the same, I’ll save you two a quarrel and direct you to the New Moon Saloon over there,” came an amused female voice. A tall, dark-haired woman dressed in men’s clothes sauntered off the boardwalk and came over to them. People averted their eyes from her, though she was beautiful enough to stand out anywhere. “Kali. Newlyweds?”

Lydia tipped her head towards Stiles, tugging at his arm so that they swayed together, and gave the woman a bright, slightly challenging smile. “Yes, well, I suppose the months in the wagon train to get here don’t count,” she said. “We are indeed.”

“Stiles and Lydia,” Stiles said, holding out his hand. “Stilinski. We’re the Stilinskis.”

Kali smiled back at them, showing a hint of sharper than normal canine, and took Stiles’ hand. She did not crush it, which, frankly, made Stiles just a little more wary. “Stilinski. Any relation to—”

“Yep, he was my great-uncle,” Stiles said. He paused and did his best to look sober, dropping his eyes when Lydia gave him a consoling pat on the shoulder. “We came as soon as we heard, but I guess you must’ve had the funeral already.”

“It was nice. Pretty tombstone, out in the cemetery, got sent all the way from San Francisco,” Kali said. She still sounded friendly enough, but she’d been weighing them up since their wagon rolled into town, and her gaze only grew sharper now. “You his heir?”

“Yeah.” Stiles held her gaze, just till he saw her brows twitch slightly in surprise, and then he smiled again. “I was so sorry to hear about his death, but my wife and I are just thrilled to be out here, ready to carry on with the ranch. We’re determined to not let my great-uncle’s legacy go to waste.”

“We’re going to run it just like he wanted,” Lydia chimed in, batting her eyes and adding a note of gushing enthusiasm to her voice. “It’s so exciting! A real Western ranch! I can’t wait to see it!”

That was a little much; Kali clearly wasn’t an idiot, taking in Lydia’s naïve act and then eyeing the well-worn, but very much intact covered wagon behind them. But something about it seemed to amuse her, and with just a thin smile, she nodded at the New Moon again.

“Well, you won’t be able to get out there before dark falls, and it’s still pretty rough in the woods around here. Robbers and plenty of wild animals,” she said. “My advice, you get yourself a room and a wash and a good hot bath, and then start out in the morning. And if you need any help, you can leave a message for me with the bartender.”

“Oh, thank you,” Stiles said, nudging Lydia when she simply frowned at Kali. “That’s—that’s very generous of you. Although we wouldn’t want to start off on the wrong foot in a new town, eating up people’s time—”

“No, no, it’s my job,” Kali said, and then she grinned at them. “I’m the sheriff around here, by the way. And I’m sure the mayor will want to come and greet you, too. We’re a friendly town, we always want to give newcomers a good welcome.”

* * *

“About as friendly as a rattlesnake,” Lydia said, getting up from drawing the last privacy sigil. She wiped the chalk off her fingers, then squeezed her way between the chests crowding their tiny room so that she could get up onto the bed.

It was the only way she’d have the space to take off her dress. Normally they’d leave the chests in the wagon—the curses branded into the bottoms would keep off most thieves—but with at least one alpha parading around town, that didn’t seem wise. So they’d carried all the important stuff up, and now Stiles was squatting on one chest while trying to wash off in the bowl the innkeeper had provided.

Awkward or not, proper hot water, steaming to touch, and enough of it to actually make decent suds, felt pretty glorious. For a moment Stiles just held his hands in it and enjoyed.

“What are we going to do about them?” Lydia asked.

Stiles looked up. “Do?”

Lydia dropped her folded dress on the bed and then, her shift hiked up around her thighs, stepped from chest to chest till she could sit down across the bowl from him. “Stiles. If she’s the sheriff here, then the mayor has to be another one of them, and that means that everything that druid told us is true.”

“What, did you think she was making it all up? She wasn’t that great a liar, so I’m not sure why you’d be surprised,” Stiles said. He gave his face a last splash, then glanced into the water and made a face when he saw how brown it was under the suds. “Anyway, they don’t know that we know anything. For all they know, we’re just a pair of harmless greenhorns who came to fail at ranching like all the others.”

“Do you really want to bet on that?” Lydia said, raising one brow.

Stiles made another face, then got up and stepping-stoned his way to the window. After checking that nobody was under it, he poured out the contents and then turned back. By then, Lydia had made her way to the second kettle that was waiting near the door, and had returned so that they met on the bed.

Damp bedding versus not getting splinters while she bathed. Lydia thought it over, pursing her lips, and then sat down on the mattress. She poured the kettle out into the bowl, then handed it to Stiles.

“Let’s not make this complicated. We’ll start with the usual story,” Stiles said, setting the kettle on the floor. “We’re just here for the ranch. It’s far enough out to not count as part of the town, and whatever the hell they want to claim as their territory, we’ve still got actual legal title.”

“Right, and a pack of alphas who all murdered their packs are going to care about that.” Lydia started to unpin her hair, then changed her mind and pinned it back up. Instead she pulled up her shift and tipped herself back on one folded leg so that she could extend the other over the bowl, sluicing over her calf and foot with soap and a handkerchief.

Stiles rolled his eyes. “Well, what, did you want to declare war on them?”

“No, of course not. But they’re a lot more brazen than I was expecting—than you were, too. She was all but showing her fangs in broad daylight,” she said. She had that little crease between her eyes, thinking it over. “I just think we’ll need to come up with that back-up plan a lot faster than we thought.”

And that was all that that meant, and Stiles had seen it more times than he could count, but for some reason, watching her bend over the bowl, it struck him a little differently. They were so used to each other by now, coughing in the dust or covered in mud or huddling together in the wagon, and now it was like he was seeing her all over again. With the cream of her thigh catching the lantern-light that the bowl of water reflected up, and the way she was biting her lip, and…

Lydia looked up, catching him at it. Stiles stammered something, feeling his face heat, and Lydia’s eyes widened and the handkerchief slipped a little in her fingers, and for a second she looked just as nervous.

Then she put her foot down on the bed, moving the bowl to a nearby chest, and gave him a mocking smile. “Honestly, Stiles, I wouldn’t put it past them to wonder whether we really are married,” she said.

“Well, that wouldn’t be a stupid question,” Stiles muttered. He rubbed at his face, then steeled himself and went back over to the bed.

She lifted her hands and put them on his shoulders, and they were shaking a little. He looked at them, then at her, just catching the edgy flicker before she firmed up her lips into another smile. This one was a little less mocking, though it was still as tense and off-kilter as he felt.

“It’s not like _this_ is new,” she said. “And this time we even have a bed.”

“Yeah,” Stiles said. He slid off the chest and onto the mattress, then grinned as the rope supports creaked and swayed under the weight. “Springy, isn’t it? Real classy place they’ve got here, even if they’re dangerous homicidal maniacs.”

“Oh, just—” Lydia said, before she pulled him down over her.

They didn’t completely shake their nerves till Stiles had shucked his trousers and had his head buried in her neck, pressing into her cunt with his fingers. Lydia hauled at his back, then his ass, breathing roughly, and then she suddenly dug her nails into him, hissing at him to just get in already. He started to look at her and she reached down to grab his cock, and well, that was more like their usual rhythm. Falling in line afterward was as easy as breathing, at this point.

“It’s fine,” she murmured afterward. “I told you, banshees can tell much more precisely. No babies.”

“I know, I remember, it’s just…God, so many damn things to remember. You’d think crossing the country would make some of them go away,” Stiles said. He laid his cheek against her shoulder for a moment, smelling her hair—even at the filthiest, most terrible parts of the trek, it always smelled a little like flowers—and then he pushed himself up on his arms. Let her roll over him to get at the water and soap. “So the alphas. I still don’t think we need to change up what we usually do that much. They might see through the act, but you know they still won’t have any idea what we really can do.”

Lydia paused with the soap half-dipped. “You don’t think that’d make them more likely to attack us? And if there really are five of them, you know that’s too many for us to handle any way besides—”

“It’s not going to get to that,” Stiles said.

“How do you know? It’s _always_ ended up with that,” Lydia snapped. Her hand jerked from the bowl, then slowly lowered as she looked away, chewing on her lip. She twisted at the ring on her finger, but jerked her hands apart when she realized what she was doing.

Stiles winced, but he knew better than to reach out to her. Instead he moved over, lying beside her without touching, and just waited till she relaxed and started washing herself again.

“I want that even less than you, you know that. Just…I was thinking, druid’s been right so far. So she was probably right about the tree too,” Stiles said. “I’m pretty sure they’ll let us get out of town. And once we’re out, we go to the Nemeton and start using it. That’ll keep them guessing about what we are, and even if they’re shifting in the streets, I don’t think they’re stupid enough to come at us before they’re sure they can get us.”

“That’s not going to throw them off forever,” Lydia said. “And who knows, they might be able to dig up something about the Nemeton. It’s been here for decades, from the sound of it, and they might hate druids but we can’t be sure they’ve killed off everyone around here who’d know something about it.”

“Yeah, I know. But if they already had somebody, they wouldn’t be holed up in town. We didn’t see a lot of signs of them away from the road, so they’re obviously staying out of the woods,” Stiles said, rolling onto his back. “Anyway, you’re missing the best part of this idea. We do this, and they’re probably going to think _we’re_ druids. We can even tell them to their faces we’re doing something with the tree and it would just help us.”

Lydia’s head tilted. She ran water down her arm for a few more seconds, and then she looked over at him, grinning. “You know, husband, I think I agree,” she said.

Stiles winced again. “I hate it when you use that voice. Creepy.”

“Creepy, but effective,” Lydia said airily. “Well, then I’d better air out my muslin. If we’re to leave first thing in the morning, that’s barely enough time to shake out the wrinkles.”

* * *

The mayor, Deucalion, had an English accent that reminded Stiles a lot of the old university librarian who’d always been after him for overdue books. Despite that, Stiles and Lydia had been fairly friendly with the man, and he and his contacts at lending libraries and private collections up and down the East Coast had been very helpful. So hearing the same accent from a charming, handsome alpha who obviously wanted to have them waylaid and murdered at some point was a little disorienting.

“Are you certain you want to leave so early? You’ve had such a long, hard journey, I imagine, and you’ve barely had time to rest your oxen,” Deucalion said, smiling, the milky blindness of his eyes in no way disguising his menace.

“Well, that’s exactly why we can’t wait a moment longer,” Lydia said earnestly. “We should have arrived a good month ago, so we’d have the time before the Hunter’s M—”

Stiles made a show of pulling Lydia up against him by the waist, cutting her off, and then smiled tensely at Deucalion, and at the pair of tall, glowering alphas he had guarding the stable entrance. “My wife means, we wanted to have time to settle in before the fall round-ups. We’re new to this whole business, I’m sure you can see that—” he laughed nervously and Deucalion relaxed enough for a hint of a smirk “—and we have a lot to learn. My great-uncle, he left me some notes—”

“What kind of notes?” Deucalion said. And then, realizing that maybe letting his eyes flare red in interest wasn’t the best way of disguising his interest, he stepped back and then gestured at yet _another_ huge alpha, who was lurking outside the stable. “My apologies. If I seem eager, it’s only that…well, we’ve had some problems in that part of the forest. The land is excellent, of course, but it’s still very untamed.”

“Oh, yes, I know, Great-Uncle wrote a lot about the trouble he was having clearing it out,” Stiles said. He eyed the new alpha, wondering idly if the pack selected based on a minimum height, and then dragged his eyes back to Deucalion as Lydia started to edge him towards their wagon. “There’s one tree that he swore was cursed, even! He just couldn’t dig it up no matter what he did.”

A laugh rang out across the stable, causing several horses to shriek in fear, and then Kali sauntered out from behind a stack of hay bales. She closed in on them from behind, but interestingly, the alphas at the door backed off, taking some cue from how she was grinning at Deucalion.

“Digging it up,” she repeated. “Well. The kind of trees out here, they _can_ root deep, can’t they. Might be best to just work around it.”

“I think we’ll want to go out and see for ourselves first,” Lydia said, prim but determined. She and Kali matched gazes for a second, and then she laughed lightly. “Well, can’t look at it from here, can we?”

“I suppose not,” Deucalion said slowly. He pursed his lips a few times, staring a little too carefully ahead, as if he didn’t know exactly where they were, and then he also stepped back. “Well, it’s not fair to keep you. Although if you run into any problems, do feel free to come back and let us know. This is a very close town here. We like to know each other.”

“That’s very nice of you, thank you so much.” Lydia let Stiles help her onto the driver’s bench, and then twisted back around to smile at Deucalion again. “We will certainly come back to visit once the ranch is in order. We can’t wait to get to know our new neighbors too.”

* * *

“I’m just saying, I think you laid it on a little thick,” Stiles said, hopping off the wagon.

Lydia followed him, with a sharp swish of her skirts that made the oxen shuffle, and then stalked up the front steps ahead of him. “As if we won’t have to go back into town eventually, Stiles. Even if someone’s bothered to keep things up, and I doubt that since nobody came to see us in town—”

The front door swung open before they even touched it. Stiles had stepped on a very creaky floorboard just before, and he figured that the jar of it had moved the door, so that wasn’t too frightening. And to be honest, after everything that they’d seen, it would take a lot to scare them.

What was inside the main ranch house wasn’t anywhere near enough, but it was depressing. He hadn’t had much hope that anybody would do more than lock the place up, and not take too much of the furniture on the way out, but he wasn’t expecting a body. And it definitely wasn’t his great-uncle, with the claws on one hand and the waist-length, half-rotted hair.

“Well,” Lydia said after a few minutes of silence had passed. She stepped out of the doorway, took a deep breath, and then unbuttoned her sleeves and rolled them up. Then she walked carefully around the corpse, using her foot to scuff out the faded spiral that somebody had traced in blood around it.

Stiles took out a piece of chalk and laid down some temporary wards on the lintel and threshold while she did that. “You want any help with it?” he asked as she made to pass by him into the house.

“No, just go set up the boundary markers,” she said, tying a handkerchief over her nose and mouth. It’d been long enough that the corpse had dried out, but musty dead smell was still musty dead smell. “And if you could clear out that well…we’re going to need water. A lot of water.”

“Got it,” Stiles said, turning around.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So making Kali sheriff is stretching it a bit, but there were female outlaws, and the frontier regions generally tended to be more relaxed about gender roles.


	2. Chapter 2

* * *

It took them well after nightfall to make just the front room of the place livable. Stiles’ great-uncle had at least had the foresight to build mostly in stone and mortar, and when he did use wood, he used good seasoned timber sealed against the wet, so aside from the broken windows and a few rotted doors, they didn’t have to do much patching up of the house itself. But he didn’t have any protections on the place. Instead there was a pair of iron horseshoes straightened and nailed into a make-shift cross by the back door, and what looked like a hastily-gathered heap of wolfsbane by the fireplace, soil still clinging to the roots. But those were so brittle that they fell apart at the slightest touch.

So far as Stiles knew, his great-uncle hadn’t been knowledgeable or anything—he’d been the first in the family to study anything supernatural. His great-uncle had clearly picked up a few things living in the area, but he must not have gotten on with the locals, since it looked like nobody had really enlightened him about the proper methods.

Stiles and Lydia took down the iron cross, saving the horseshoes for later, and dumped the wolfsbane dust on top of the werewolf corpse, which they’d hauled out of the house and carried well past the temporary boundary stakes. “Omega, I’m guessing,” Stiles said, halfway through burying it. “Had a lot of broken bones. Probably had a run-in with the alphas, dragged herself here to hide, and then ran into my great-uncle.”

“I suppose there was something to his complaints about his men insisting on heading back to town at night,” Lydia muttered. She’d changed to men’s clothes to help him out, and redone her hair in a simple braid that kept slipping over her shoulder. She flicked that onto her back again, then wiped at her forehead. “I checked the other rooms and it’s cleaned out of furniture, but I found a few boxes of bullets. But none of them are hollowpoint.”

“Well, we’ll just have to try to not shoot anyone for now,” Stiles said. “And he might’ve been family, but he should’ve paid them more if he wanted them to stay out here after dark. My father always said he was a cheapskate.” 

“Not something we’ll have to worry about,” Lydia snorted.

Body buried, Lydia went back to warding the house, while Stiles scavenged some fodder for the oxen, which were bedded down in the separate stable. He kept an eye and an ear out, but didn’t see any werewolf signs, aside from a few marking scratches on tree trunks. Those were so old that they were overgrown with moss and lichen, but just in case, he pulled out his knife and added an alarm rune on a nearby bush.

Then he went back to the house. He gulped down some food, then took over the house wards while Lydia napped on their mattress of lumped-together sacks. Then she woke up and he took his turn sleeping.

They spent the better part of the week like that, working to get the house in order. Stiles didn’t even bother to try and go out and find if the property had any cattle left on it; the furthest either of them went was when they went to shoot a little game to stretch out their provisions. But at the end of the week, they had a good, solid, defensible house. They’d even figured out how to use a pile of bricks left by somebody to extend the house to the well, so they didn’t have to go outside to get water.

However, they were running short of supplies, and they still needed to deal with the Nemeton; they hadn’t seen anybody from town yet, but neither of them thought the alphas would leave it like that forever. And while it’d been pretty quiet so far, last night Stiles had woken in a cold sweat from a nightmare, and then Lydia had caught herself doodling tree pictures in the ashes spilling out of the hearth.

They still needed one ox, at least till they got a horse, but unless they planned to move back across the country, they didn’t need the second one. So right after breakfast, Stiles and Lydia led it out of the stable and through the woods to the Nemeton.

“Impressive,” Lydia said, looking up at its thick, gnarled branches. She tilted her head and her eyes grew hazy for a few seconds, and then she twitched back, making a face. “Also, hungry.”

“Aren’t they all,” Stiles muttered. He finished knotting off the ox’s lead rope to a low-hanging branch, and then stepped back to pick up the ax and hammer. “All right, you want to chant or—”

“You chant,” she said, taking the hammer from him. She already had her sleeves rolled up, and an old canvas sack with armholes cut out over her front as a makeshift apron. “Honestly, I am so _sick_ of cornmeal everything. Cornmeal for breakfast, cornmeal for lunch, cornmeal for dinner…”

Lydia stalked around to face the ox, who nervously tossed its head and stamped its feet. It’d been docile up till now, but it must have been picking up something from the tree, because it bellowed and then lowered its head, as if to charge.

And then it and Lydia locked eyes. The ox stiffened, the muscles over its shoulders bunching with tension, and a little trickle of drool started from the corner of its mouth. It watched her as she smiled, and kept watching dully as she carefully swung up the hammer behind her, and then, just as Stiles finished off the prayer, brought it crashing down onto the ox’s forehead.

The ox fell onto its knees, grunting, and then slowly toppled over onto its side. Stiles looked at the bloody dent in its skull, then shrugged and stepped forward with the ax. 

“I don’t think the cornmeal has been _that_ bad,” he said. He took the sack apron from Lydia, put it on, and then swung the ax down into the ox’s neck. Grimaced at the blood spatter till it got out of his eyes, checked how much neck he had to go, and then swung the ax again. “Could be worse, you know. Could be like that terrible soup we had in St. Louis.”

“That wasn’t soup, that was dirty water with a little salt in it,” Lydia snorted. She moved out of the way of the blood spray, going back to their pack, and then returned with the gutting knives. “At any rate, I want some vegetables. So if those alphas decide to cause any trouble—”

Stiles stepped back, then bent down and sawed through that last tendon with the ax. He took off the apron and tossed it to the side. “Be serious, Lydia, we are _not_ crossing them for a bunch of onions. The whole point of coming out here in the first place was so that we could…”

He whirled around, dropping the ax so he had both hands free, while beside him, Lydia stooped and ran her hand through the blood soaking into the Nemeton’s roots, then slapped it back against its trunk.

“I am so sorry, were we interrupting?” said the older of the pair. He smiled pleasantly at them, holding up empty hands. “But it was such a _fascinating_ conversation. And setting. And actors. Please, don’t let our presence stop you.”

They were both werewolves, clearly pack, although they didn’t strike Stiles as alphas. The younger one was a lot more forthright about how willing he was to go at them if they stepped wrong, what with the scowl and claws, but his shoulders hunched with a wariness that didn’t suit his tall, broad-shouldered form at all. And the older one limped slightly as he came closer, his shirt pulling at the cuff and collar to show hints of bad scarring. He was still smiling, all twinkling blue eyes and handsome face like a dime novel hero, but he had a cynical, bitter twist to it.

And they both looked…well, their clothes were neat and clean and obviously kept up, but they were a little threadbare. He had a feeling that the ox was probably the prettiest feast they’d seen in a while.

“Well, I don’t think that’s really up to you so much as the tree here,” Stiles finally said. He and Lydia shifted to either side of the dead ox so that the werewolves could get a better look at the roots sluggishly twisting under the body, white tips rising up from the dirt like worms to dip into the mud.

The younger man’s eyes widened and he immediately jerked back, a disgusted look on his face. The older one stopped where he was and lowered his hands. He regarded the roots for a second, not quite as disgusted, but the respect that flickered through his eyes was well-tempered with resentment.

“Yet another druid?” he sighed. “I’d speak about the fates of your predecessors, except that—”

“If we were druids, we wouldn’t be bringing it an ox, would we,” Lydia sniffed.

The man’s brows rose. “No?”

“No,” Stiles said firmly. He considered the two of them, then looked at Lydia. She pursed her lips a few times, then nodded at him. He almost sighed, annoyed that she’d dump the decision on him, and then he looked back at the—surprisingly patiently—waiting werewolves. “No, we’re just doing a little friendly introduction. Since we’ve just moved in and all. Why, do you think there’s something wrong with that?”

The younger man frowned, then muttered something under his breath that wasn’t audible to Stiles, but clearly was to the older man, who looked irritated and who then dismissively flicked his fingers. Which made the younger man stalk off a few paces, although then he turned around, and he was still careful to keep an open line on Stiles and Lydia.

“No, of course not,” the older man said, looking at them with considerably more curiosity. “So you’re the Stilinskis.”

“Stiles and Lydia. I’d say it’s a pleasure to meet you, but I have no idea who I’m meeting,” Stiles said.

The man smiled at them again, with genuine amusement mixed into the hostility. “I’m Peter, and that back there is my nephew Derek. I don’t know whether you’ve heard of the Hales, being so new…”

“No, we have. Well, mostly that you were all dead,” Stiles said.

“False reports aren’t unusual in this region,” Peter said, with a careless shrug.

“Deliberate?” Lydia asked. When he looked at her, she pushed off the tree, then purposefully looked away from him and at the ground.

She put her hand out—the bloody one, so Stiles grabbed her by the wrist instead—and then leaned back so that she could swing and scoop up the gutting knives from where she’d dropped them, while keeping as much of her skirts out of the blood as possible. Then Stiles helped her off the tree roots and around the ox.

Peter raised his brows, while Derek shifted towards a crouch, but neither of them moved as Stiles and Lydia poked at the ox, pushing down on its side, seeing whether any more blood came out of the headless neck. Which turned out to be a moot point, what with how some roots had inserted themselves directly into the stump.

“Guess it’s done?” Stiles said to Lydia.

She put her hand back on the trunk, tilted her head, and then nodded. Then she held up a foreleg as he slashed open the gut, stopping every so often so that the roots could withdraw without getting cut. They were starting to creep back anyway, now that the blood was all gone.

“Heart, lungs, liver?” Stiles said, looking back at Peter. When the man didn’t answer, Stiles sighed and then pulled his hands out of the ox to gesture at it. “Well, it’s not like the tree needs these parts, and we’re not going to take them.”

“That’s very neighborly of you,” Peter said, without moving closer. Though he couldn’t help a hungry look, and Stiles could hear Derek sniffing. “I doubt that the Alpha pack would be pleased if they caught wind of your generosity.”

“Well, they won’t be so happy to find out you’re alive either, will they? From what we’ve heard,” Lydia said. She sucked in her breath, grappling with the foreleg, and then, when Stiles nodded, dropped it with a sigh of relief. Almost wiped at her face before remembering she had blood on her hand. She looked at it, grimaced, and then walked over to get the waterskin to rinse that off. “Speaking of, why would you let us see you if you thought we’d tell?”

Peter considered them, expression unreadable beyond a wary amusement, and then he nodded sharply. Derek hissed at him but he ignored the other man, and came over, delicately rounding the ox’s head before stopping on the other side of the corpse from Stiles. “Because we thought it was a moot point. This is far enough back that they only come out when they’re after something, and you’re dealing with a Nemeton. Unless you know what you’re doing, that rarely results in a kind fate—and even when you do, I understand it’s a delicate balance.”

“So either you’d deal with it or the tree would, and nobody was ever going to see us again,” Stiles said, snorting. He wiped his knife off on the side of the ox, then stepped back. Got the ax and hammer while he was at it, taking those over to Lydia while Peter slowly squatted down by the ox. “Well, instead of that, how about we leave, and not talk about you, and you save us the trouble of dragging that off to bury? And then we’re all happy.”

“I don’t know about ‘happy,’ but I’ll admit that you seem less ill-equipped than your appearance suggests,” Peter muttered. He rolled up his sleeve, showing a thick tracery of scarring up his arm, and then reached into the ox’s gut.

He held himself a little stiffly too, not bending enough to make that easy for him, and it had nothing to do with keeping his clothes clean. Stiles heard Lydia make a thoughtful noise and knew she’d also picked up on it. “Hang on,” he said.

Peter looked up sharply, and a few paces away, Derek—who was _sneaky_ —suddenly snarled, twisting so that he was triangulated between Peter and Stiles. “What’s that?” he said, looking down and behind Stiles.

Stiles looked over, then reached down and took the hairpin from Lydia. He pricked the end of his finger with it, handed it back to her, with a pause for Derek to get a good look at it, and then he went back over to the tree. He stayed out of lunging range, while Peter pivoted to track him but didn’t make any move towards him.

“Would it make you feel better if there was a little quid pro quo?” Stiles said to Peter. The man took a breath, brows drawing together, and Stiles held up his bleeding finger. “We’re not going to say anything about you, but we’re planning to go into town soon. We need supplies. And we’d really like it if the mayor didn’t know what we’re doing out here, or had any other reason to be interested in us. Well, more interested in us.”

“So why don’t you just go after him?” Derek said. He moved up behind Peter, wary, his hands still held for a swipe. “If you’re good enough to quiet that—” he nodded at the Nemeton “—he can’t be that hard.”

“Because having a working relationship with a magical tree and fighting off a pack of alphas are two _very_ different things,” Lydia said, standing up. She smiled sweetly at a skeptical Derek, then flicked a drop of her blood towards the tree, causing the branches to rattle. “And really, we just got here. We don’t even know where our stock is. Putting a pack war on us is a little much this early, isn’t it?”

Derek did not find that acceptable in the least, but he bit back whatever he’d been about to say, instead looking down at Peter. Who was at least thinking it over.

“I’ve looked into Nemetons myself,” he finally said, looking at Stiles’ bleeding finger. And then at Stiles, a very old bitterness passing over his eyes as he rubbed his hand over the scars on his arm. “If dealing with it were that cheap, I wouldn’t still have these.”

“Yeah, well, if it were that cheap, we wouldn’t be talking about the Alphas in the first place, would we?” Stiles said. Then he pulled out a handkerchief and made as if to wrap up his finger. “I was just going to make it hurt a little less, but fine, if it makes you uncomfortable—”

“You saw his eyes, I assume?” Peter said abruptly. He turned away, going back to working at dragging out the…he was a liver and sweetbreads man, apparently. “It’s not that old an injury, a few years or so. He was sighted most of his life, and now he’s not, I’ve heard he hasn’t adjusted well. He has terrible headaches, very painful, and so far the only reliable cure is to kill another werewolf. Not that he minds that so much, but seeing as werewolves are in short supply around here, he might be well-disposed towards someone who came up with another cure.”

Stiles grimaced. Then turned his finger so that the blood ran off the tip and fell onto a Nemeton root cluster. The branches rattled briefly, almost sounding like a scolding voice, and then an odd fruit, a bit like a fleshy red acorn, dropped from them, right into Peter’s open palm.

“I’m starting to see why this town has the reputation it does,” Stiles muttered.

“Quite,” Peter agreed. He held the fruit up and sniffed it, and then, just as Derek started to raise a wary hand, popped it into his mouth. Chewed, swallowed, and then he grimaced in disgust. Still, he seemed considerably more relaxed as he finished tugging out the sweetbreads. “Rather like quinine candy. Not very palatable.”

“Well, we’re not starting a pharmacy,” Stiles said, stepping back. He licked his finger, then wrapped it up in the handkerchief.

“So why’d you come here? You don’t look like ranchers,” Derek said. Then he grinned at Lydia, wide and more than a little unfriendly, as she opened her mouth. “You don’t act like them either.”

She shut her mouth, then narrowed her eyes. His grin faded a little, then disappeared completely as she turned her shoulder on him and then hiked their pack onto it. She couldn’t carry it herself and Stiles went back over to take it over, and then frowned as instead of just handing it over, Lydia leaned over and pecked him on the cheek.

“Quid pro quo,” she called over her shoulder. “And you’re a little behind, but as good neighbors we’ll let you put it on credit.”

Stiles winced, ducking behind a bush so that the werewolves wouldn’t see, and then twisted around so that he could keep them in sight as he and Lydia walked away. Peter was laughing quietly, his shoulders shaking, as he continued to butcher the ox. Derek stared right back at Stiles, grim and unsmiling, even as he crouched down and started to help Peter.

“I’m not sure that was the best idea,” Stiles said, once he thought they were out of earshot. “I thought we were trying to _lie low._ Hard to do that if we’re getting friendly with the local outlaws.”

“Speaks the man who all but made Peter think you were going to offer him your own blood,” Lydia said tartly. “Besides, he did have an interesting idea about Deucalion’s headaches.”

“If he’s telling the truth.” Stiles rubbed at the side of his face, then glanced behind them again. Of course there wasn’t anybody, and he felt a flare of irritation when he realized he was actually disappointed about that. He knew better. “And even if he is, there’s something in it for him. He looks like that type, doesn’t he?”

“Among other types,” Lydia said dryly.

Stiles glanced sharply at her, then laughed. He resettled the pack on his back and then put his arm over her shoulders, pulling her in as she smiled too. “Oh, are we playing that way? Well, I guess it wouldn’t hurt. God knows they have even less reason to speak to the Alphas than we do, and if they’ve managed to hide this close for this long, they must know a few useful things.”

* * *

By the time they got back to the ranch house and made themselves not look like people who’d been sacrificing animals in the woods, it was too late to go into town. Stiles watched Lydia pick at her food, then sighed and unpacked enough gold for a horse. He’d wanted to put that off till they at least looked like they were running a ranch, and avoid all the questions about where their money came from and how rich were they, but he had a feeling that those probably were the least of the questions they’d be facing. More important would be to get something that went faster than their remaining ox.

He was proven right in the morning, when he went out to relieve himself, and found that somebody had herded about a dozen head of cattle into a grove just outside their boundary markers. The cattle weren’t penned in, but he found fresh scratch marks on the trees around them, and guessed that the werewolf scent had done the rest.

“Well, I’ll double the coffee order,” was Lydia’s only comment on it.

Once they got to town, they parked the wagon and ox at the hotel stable and then split up. Lydia went off to put in their order at the general store, while Stiles worked on finding a horse to buy. They’d agreed that they’d wait and see which one of them was approached first, and then that one would offer Deucalion a headache draught in return for being left alone. 

Turned out, that was Lydia. Stiles bought a horse, walked it back to the general store and saw Lydia and Deucalion and one of the twins through the window. She still had her gloves on, so he kept on going.

He left the horse in the hotel stable, planning to go and wait for her in the saloon, but he was still in the alley between the hotel and the neighboring building when somebody tried to drag him behind a barrel.

“Jesus Christ,” Derek muttered, rubbing at his chest. “You feel like you have nails in your elbow.”

“Yeah, well, I’m not fond of small dark places,” Stiles said. He shook off his clothes, then glanced up and down the alley, and gave the roofs a once-over too. Then he slid his knife back into his sleeve.

“Ennis and Kali are out of town, and Ethan’s busy,” Derek said, head cocked, eyes flicking to the knife and then back up to Stiles. “So if you’re worried about being caught with me, it shouldn’t be a problem unless you do something stupid.”

“Says the man who’s just decided he’ll visit the town run by his pack’s murderers.” Stiles brushed at his arm again, wondering whether that had been a long enough touch to leave a scent, and then resigned himself to just ordering the smelliest, shittiest booze the saloon had to cover it up. “Speaking of, what brings you here? Did you wake up this morning and suddenly have an urge to throw yourself into the most dangerous situation possible?”

Derek snorted, then stooped to pick up something from the ground. “You sound like Peter. Also, no,” he said. “I just came for supplies, same as you.”

He hefted the something, which turned out to be a parcel wrapped in brown paper and stamped by the general store. “Fair enough,” Stiles said. “I guess even for werewolves, there are some things you just can’t get in the wild. But your timing’s a little funny, isn’t it?”

“What, that I’d go in the same day as the new people, who Deucalion’s still sizing up as a threat?” Derek said, drier and more sarcastic than Stiles would have expected from him. Away from his uncle he was starting to develop a personality.

And smarts, since Stiles had to give him that point, too. “All right, good move, using us as your distraction. So why aren’t you skedaddling out of town, since he’s busy with Lydia?”

Derek’s confidence faded like bones under the desert sun. He cocked his head again, listening for something, and then abruptly stepped towards Stiles, grabbing Stiles’ sleeve when Stiles jerked back. Was good enough to get it so Stiles couldn’t pull out the knife, too.

“Because—” Then Derek stopped. His eyes twitched like he was going to roll them, and then he sighed and just let go of Stiles’ sleeve. “Well, first, I’m not about to beat you up, so can you stop pulling weapons on me?”

Stiles smiled apologetically and put the pistol back in its holster. “Sorry. I don’t know if you noticed, but I really don’t like being grabbed.”

“I’ll try and remember that next time,” Derek muttered irritably. He rolled his shoulders, then nodded at the end of the alley. “So you see those three horses there? Starting with the paint?”

“Yes,” Stiles said slowly. “Not friendly?”

Derek snorted. “Hunters. And no, they’re not here for the Alphas. They get _paid_ by them, and there are more waiting just outside town. I can’t get through them by myself, and there isn’t anywhere here for me to hide overnight.”

“So they’ll take your money here, but they won’t keep a good customer from getting killed,” Stiles said, tapping Derek’s parcel.

The way Derek smiled at him, all mirthless humor, showed the family resemblance between him and his uncle. “No. But _we’re_ neighbors, and there are more of your steers running around the woods.”

“And the ones you’ve found so far are so damn skinny I’m not sure it’s worth feeding them through the winter,” Stiles muttered. “Honestly, I never knew the man, but you’d think at least one of my great-uncle’s hands would’ve stuck around and taken care of things, if only to see if they got a job with us.”

“I guess, if the Alphas haven’t been paying so much that pretty much anybody with a gun signs up with them,” Derek said. When Stiles looked at him, he grinned again, and it was warmer, but mostly with self-satisfaction. “Might also have been because they didn’t want to leave anybody near the Nemeton. Your great-uncle was clueless, from what we heard, but not the locals. That good enough for you?”

“Seriously, for somebody begging for help, you’re a real asshole about it.” Stiles rubbed at the side of his face, trying to remember the layout between the alley and the general store, and almost missed the way Derek’s face tightened.

It wasn’t fear, that was the thing. The man just looked _resigned_ , as if he’d never expected Stiles to say yes. Considering he had the balls in the first place to sneak into town, that seemed odd.

And, well, Stiles didn’t want to get involved, but he also didn’t want to witness a werewolf killing. “All right, neighbor,” he muttered. “Come on back to the stables.”

The only reaction Derek had was to blink hard. He didn’t say thank-you, or even lighten up his grim expression, but at least that meant they didn’t waste any time. Once they made sure that none of the stablehands were around, Stiles helped Derek up into the wagon, and then poked around till he found the muck pile.

“What are you doing?” Derek said, nose twitching, when Stiles brought over a bag of filthy hay.

“Shut up and breathe through your mouth,” Stiles snapped.

Surprisingly, Derek obeyed him. Stiles said a silent prayer that it’d stay that way, then hitched his new horse to the backboard, got the ox harnessed up, and drove the wagon around to the general store. Lydia and Deucalion were just coming out the door and Lydia paused, then smiled soppily at Stiles. “Oh, how wonderful!” she said, turning to the twin following behind her. Very closely behind her. “What excellent timing! I suppose we won’t need the help loading up after all.”

“It won’t be any trouble,” said the twin.

“No, no, I wouldn’t be any kind of husband if I let somebody else show me up in front of my wife,” Stiles said, smiling just as soppily back at Lydia. He leaned over and kissed her lightly, then hooked their arms together as he helped her down the two shallow steps. “Deucalion, good to see you two. My wife was hoping you’d run into each other. She’s been wondering ever since we came here whether she might be able to help you with that terrible injury of yours. She’s got a few old family recipes—her grandmother claimed she was an Irish wise woman, that sort of thing.”

“Yes, we’ve discussed it, and I do appreciate the offer,” Deucalion said. He gave them a bland smile and then strolled off, after a cluck to an obviously reluctant twin.

“That one is Aiden,” Lydia said under her breath, still smiling, giving Aiden a princess wave while leaning her head into Stiles’ cheek. “Also, why on earth do I smell manure?”

“For your vegetable garden, darling,” Stiles said, looking at her. “You’ve always told me it’s the key to prize-winning carrots, and nothing else will do. I didn’t even have to pay for it.”

Lydia’s eyes narrowed, but she left it till he and the shopkeeper had the new supplies loaded, and they’d driven a decent way out of town. Then she reached over, took the reins and halted the ox, and turned around.

“Out, and take it all with you,” she ordered.

The bag of manure had already been heaved over the backboard, startling the horse aside, and then Derek popped up, blowing his nose out and angrily scrubbing at his hair and somehow managing to scowl in the middle of all of that. “His idea,” he said, retrieving his parcel.

“Hunters in town, working with the Alphas, had to be neighborly,” Stiles explained to Lydia.

She immediately switched from visibly wondering where he’d left his mind to hiding her concern. “What kind of hunters?”

“Not for you, or for us,” Derek said. He swung himself over the backboard and then came around to the front of the wagon. Was nice enough to kick the manure bag off to the side of the road while he was at it, though from the look on his face, he was going to blame Stiles for every second he spent washing his shoe. “Not even fucking trained…Deucalion puts out bounties on people, hires pretty much anybody who’ll take his money.”

“Well, I suppose he is the mayor,” Lydia said after a moment.

Derek’s lip curled back in disgust. “They’re after packs he wants to destroy. That’s how he starts, he has somebody grabbed and taken back here, and then they kill them to show the alpha’s not strong enough to protect the pack. Not that you’re interested in that.”

“And it was a lovely chat, but Stiles and I _must_ be getting home now. Do take care of yourself, and try not to have to hide in anyone else’s wagons,” Lydia said, with a tight smile and an even tighter slap of the reins to the ox’s flanks.

The ox bellowed and started up. It settled a few steps later, but not till Stiles had lost his hat knocking around the bench and doing his best to not fall off. He got a good handhold and leaned around the side of the wagon, looking back at the road.

“I hate that hat anyway,” Lydia said. “I’ve been trying to destroy it since you bought it.”

“I know, and congratulations, you’ve succeeded in annoying our neighbor so much that he’s stolen it,” Stiles said. He pulled himself back around, saw how she was looking at him and shrugged. “No idea. But he’s gone and it’s gone, and honestly, I was mostly keeping it to see how creative you got anyway.”

Still looking at him, Lydia slapped the reins against the ox’s flank again. It jerked and Stiles had to grab at the bench, but it was worth it for the way she snorted, with that little upwards quirk to her mouth.

“So, seemed like your end went well,” he said, when they were several hundred yards down and no Derek. “You’ve at least one friend in town.”

“I wouldn’t call Aiden a friend, but they did pick well from a physical standpoint, didn’t they?” Lydia said, head tipped, a considering look on her face. Then she pulled herself straight again and leaned into him. When he glanced at her, she pushed the reins back into his hands and then tucked her hand into the crook of his arm. “Don’t be silly. Strangely enough, I’m not very interested in cheating on my husband with a handsome alpha werewolf who’s desperate to figure out exactly _what_ I am for his master.”

And if it’d been before, Stiles would have just taken that bit of flattery as a miracle. These days, it made him look more sharply at her. Then he pressed his arm into his side, squeezing the hand she had tucked between them.

“It went about as well as can be expected, but I don’t know how long this will last either. I think it might have just made Deucalion curious about what else we could do for him,” she said, with a quick glance at him. “I’m not saying—”

“Because that’s not happening,” Stiles said flatly. “I’m—Lyds, I can’t—not again. Not _ever_ again. I just—I can’t.”

“I know,” she said quietly, soothingly. She looked at him again, then moved her hand so that she could rub it against her back, right where the tension was starting to build. Her ring dug at him a little, through his shirt. “Anyway, it’s a little foolish to play your best hand first.”

Stiles worked the reins between his fingers a few inches, then let them out. He took a deep breath, reminded himself that they knew what they were doing now, and then nodded. “That…sounds like you have a plan.”

“I don’t, sorry,” Lydia said, small and sober. She took her own deep breath, and then curled her hand around his arm again. “I do have an idea about stalling till we can put one together. But let’s get back home first. Dealing with that man is exhausting, Stiles, you have no idea. He talks like one of my three-volume novels, and by the time you’ve gotten to the last part, you’ve completely forgotten the first.”

“Sorry,” Stiles said, dredging up a smile for her. “I promise I’ll look more attractive to power-crazy alphas, next time it comes up.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Western ranching, since it required a certain amount of capital to get into (as opposed to just staking a subsistence farm claim), often attracted well-educated, middle class or higher types, in one of the nation's first land speculation bubbles. There even was the random Old World noble (see: Marquis de Mores, who founded Medora, ND).


	3. Chapter 3

Lydia’s new idea was that instead of simply using the Nemeton to create a few general frights and keep up the woods’ haunted reputation, they’d wake it up enough so that it could target its illusions at the Alphas and their men. While she’d been talking with Deucalion, it’d become clear that he had no idea what they were, and that, even after killing a darach and at least one other druid, he was very unfamiliar with Nemetons. If they let the tree draw out his personal fears and make them into hallucinations and nightmares, he’d likely think they had much more personal knowledge of him than they actually did, and he’d waste time trying to figure out how they were connected to his past before he came after them.

Especially if the tree managed to dig into his head to the point that it was rooting out things only people long dead might know. It’d take a few more sacrificed cattle, but that would help deal with their dilemma about what to do with those, anyway. 

It wasn’t a bad plan. “And I do believe it’d have a high probability of success, so long as he doesn’t bring in anyone knowledgeable enough to guess at what you’re doing,” Peter said.

Stiles and Lydia hadn’t even started the second sacrifice when Peter had shown up. But he’d shown empty hands, then had settled himself well away from the tree, apparently just interested in watching them perform the ritual. A few times Stiles had caught him mouthing to himself, repeating some of the chants, and Lydia had silently pointed out the little aborted gesture Peter had made, accompanying Stiles’ smash of the hammer into the steer’s head with a swipe of his fingers.

It was fairly harmless stuff—anyway, he seemed smart enough to know that trying a Nemeton ritual just based on watching one was likely to get him killed—and afterward, they were left with a dead steer again. So Lydia had asked if Peter wanted the offal, and Peter had responded by saying thank you, yes, and also, so sorry about Derek’s attitude the other day, he _did_ actually appreciate not being publicly slaughtered.

Besides, sacrifices were hard work. So Peter came over and had himself a lunch of fresh liver, while Stiles and Lydia cleaned off and then sat down with their packed lunch. And Stiles figured he might as well mention why things might look a little funny around the ranch. If they already had one set of werewolves after them, he didn’t want to add another set just because they picked the wrong time to come over with a housewarming present.

Not that that meant he thought Peter’s interest was all friendly. “Like you?” Stiles said.

“Well, yes,” Peter said, delicately wiping a smear of liver from his mouth. He grimaced, then covered his mouth with his hand and did something to his teeth. Then he dropped his hand and sliced off a fresh piece of liver. “Deucalion’s very well educated, but before he was blinded he focused mostly on, shall we say, gentle arts. Afterward…you’ve met his companions, haven’t you?”

“Not the type to read to him,” Stiles said. “Let alone on their own.”

“And you of course are well-versed in non-gentle arts,” Lydia said, nearly at the same time.

Peter smiled at both of them. He ate his last piece of liver, then rolled it into the steer’s hide, along with several large cuts of meat he planned to take for later. “Yes. Although fortunately for you, we did manage to recover what was left of our family’s library, so Deucalion doesn’t have that at his disposal. You may also know that he’s decided, quite violently, to do without druids, so it’s very unlikely that any of them would provide him with information now.”

“Unless he made them. Or he made you. Or made peace with you,” Stiles said.

“Such a cynical mind for one so young,” Peter said, after a short pause. For all that he sounded mocking, he looked a cross between intrigued and wary. “Well, I can’t speak for a druid who’d be silly enough to still live within reach of him, but as for myself…he blames my family for his blinding. I don’t think he’d be willing to forget that in order to buy help from me. Werewolves tend to be vindictive, in case you’re not familiar with our kind.”

Lydia wiped off her hands and mouth on the handkerchief that had held her food, then rose up to shake out her skirts. “And I suppose you wouldn’t admit whether you’d be willing to sell your help, should he ask.”

Peter’s eyes had started to follow her like any other man’s, but at that he went cool and thoughtful. He looked at Stiles, too, and for a second Stiles thought the man might just charm his way to a different subject.

But instead Peter cleaned his hands off on the steer hide and then pulled himself around so that he was fully facing both of them. He also dropped slightly, so that his head was slower than Stiles, who was still sitting. 

“I’m not particularly moral,” he said in a calm, flat voice, its very lack of emotion speaking volumes about how deep his anger ran. “My inclination is to survive first. But Deucalion killed the last alpha in my family—he took that from us. If there’s a dispute of that—it should stay with the blood. And he’s taken our land, and he’s taken our pride as well, reduced us to living like this, in the woods off scraps. If we wanted to be nothing more than beasts we wouldn’t shift to be men.”

He looked at them a moment longer, and then his shoulders loosened, his head rose a fraction to level out with Stiles’ head. Then he rolled from his knees onto his feet, staying in a crouch as he began to heft up the meat. He was moving a little more fluidly, but still favoring one side.

“You didn’t say anything about if he made you,” Stiles said.

Peter looked up, bemused. “Oh. A completionist, are you?”

“We like to say careful,” Lydia said.

“Ah. In that case, he would certainly try, but I assure you, nothing he could think of will be worse than what I’ve already experienced,” Peter said, picking up the hide-wrapped load. He paused to wrestle it so that the blood wouldn’t drip out one end, then began to turn away.

Stiles raised his hand, rooting around with his other in their pack, and then half-rose himself. “Hey, wait.”

Peter had already stopped. He tensed, but then allowed Stiles to toss the flask onto the top of the tied hide. Then he sniffed. “Well, I apologize if this seems ungrateful, but I’m not one for raw moonshine.”

“It’s all we have right now, sorry if we have to save our money for something besides high-end liquor,” Stiles muttered. “Also, did whatever happen to you affect your nose?”

“It’s a tincture,” Lydia said as Peter sniffed again, frowning. “It won’t work as fast as the Nemeton berry, but getting it to fruit too often will make it more active than we want.”

“True,” Peter said slowly. His hands shifted as if he were going to reach for the flask, and then he moved them back, grimacing as the meat moved within the hide. He took another step away, but stayed facing them. “Deucalion has very few allies outside of his pack, let alone ones who might know anything about a Nemeton. But there are hunters who study that sort of thing, and he does have a great deal of cash on hand. You might consider that.”

“Sure,” Stiles said under his breath, as Peter vanished into the woods. “We’ll consider it. That’s exactly what we’re going to do.”

* * *

“I think we need a spy in town,” Lydia said when they were in bed.

A nice, warm bed. One thing the house had going for it was a dedicated master bedroom, which had an odd, if roomy, platform built out of bricks. After some poking around, they’d figured out that Stiles’ great-uncle—who had been architect with a thing for ancient Roman engineering before he’d caught the ranching bug—had built a variation on a hypocaust. Pipes hidden in the walls carried hot smoke from the fireplace into the platform, then carried it back to the chimney once it’d circled around. Add a mattress on top and it was about the coziest thing Stiles had ever laid on.

“I think this is getting really complicated,” Stiles muttered, half-dozing next to her. The weather was starting to turn, the air nipping at night and in the mornings, and on top of that, the sky had been filling up with rainclouds before the sun had set. “Why, you have someone set up?”

“After the _two_ times we’ve been to town, both of which we spent dancing on eggshells for the Alphas’ amusement,” Lydia said scathingly. Then she rolled over onto her belly, her hand absently sliding across his back, and she sighed into her pillow. “We are here to stay. Aren’t we? That’s the sort of thing we need to start looking at. We might be hiding but we can’t keep our heads in the sand about what _they’re_ up to.”

Stiles pulled his hand out of the sheets and rubbed at his face. “All right, well, who else besides an alpha have we talked to when we’ve been there? The general store…oh, well, there’s that maid in the hotel, she seemed to like gossiping.”

“Maid,” Lydia said.

He looked at her, then rolled his eyes. “Alpha admirer.”

“That’s so we don’t _die_ , you idiot,” she said, with a small push at his shoulder. Then she snuggled in against him, suddenly smiling in a way that made him nervous. “It’s that blonde one, isn’t it? The one who brought you the extra kettle of hot water? I knew she was talking to you too long. What’s her name?”

“Erica? I think? I was trying to _not_ talk to her,” Stiles said irritably, only to have Lydia snort at him.

“She’s passable, if I’m remembering right,” she said thoughtfully, her head tipping back. She smiled at him again, slow and a little wicked, and then slid her hands around to cup his waist as he turned to face her. “Well, the hair, someone really needs to brush it out properly, but a nice figure.”

“Are we still talking spies or something else here?” Stiles said, grinning himself.

And then—he wasn’t sure why, he didn’t think it was either of them, but suddenly it was strange. He saw Lydia pause too and he started to ease back, only to have her fingers grip his waist hard. Stiles frowned, then glanced around, the back of his neck prickling. He shifted up over Lydia, then whistled softly.

The protective runes and sigils all lit up like they should. He laid back down, but kept looking around till Lydia put her hand up on his cheek. To reassure, not to—that mood was well out the door, with whatever the hell had come over them.

“Maybe we overdid it with the tree,” Lydia suggested. “We’ll check the wards in the morning. Lord knows we don’t need any help with bad influences.”

“Yeah,” Stiles said, though he doubted it. If anything, they’d underdone it; that steer had been stringier than a harp. “So Aiden. You like him?”

“Do you like this girl Erica?” Lydia said, raising her brows.

“Are we really any good at being a married couple?” Stiles asked. Then he shook his head and looked off to the side. He knew there wasn’t anything out there, but he still felt—off. And Lydia…he loved her, he really did, but he knew how they’d ended up here and sometimes he couldn’t help thinking it hadn’t been worth it.

It wasn’t her. It wasn’t her at all, and she knew that, and when she turned his head back and kissed him softly, she was saying she had those thoughts too. And she understood, she really did. And maybe that did make them fit together, he thought. If not before, then now, and—thinking about before wasn’t helpful. 

“I don’t know. She seems nice, for the couple minutes we’ve talked so far,” Stiles said after a moment. He kissed Lydia, then moved so that he could lie beside her again, one hand cupping her shoulder. “Honestly, though, before we talk about getting friendly with anyone else, shouldn’t we talk about the ones who we’re already picnicking with?”

“I don’t like Derek, but you’re on the fence. And we both like Peter, but he’s clearly angling for something out of us. What is there to talk about?” Lydia said. She closed her eyes, then turned her head and pressed her face into his. “God. The longer we’re together, the more I think like you.”

“Oh, come on, Lydia, you know we were always one mind split at birth,” Stiles said, grinning.

“And I took all the common sense,” she said, smacking him again. Then she sighed, settling closer to him. “All right, fine, we’ll put the spy idea aside for now. But we’re supposed to bring that medicine to Deucalion at the end of the week. And you know they’ll try and make us stay longer, and I don’t like the idea of getting stuck in town, especially now that the Nemeton’s working at them. We need to figure out something.”

* * *

It rained that night, but the real storm didn’t arrive till later that week. Hard, pouring, endless rain that got into any crack possible, and even when it didn’t, the air was still so moist that it felt like walking through veil after veil of slimy water. The road turned to ankle-breaking mud where it hadn’t washed out completely. A steer drowned in a stream that fed into their spring, polluting it, and Stiles sighed and put on the clothes he was least fond of, and went out to clear it away.

He hiked upstream till he’d found where the body had snarled in the roots of an overhanging tree, and was grumpily attempting to wipe the water out of his eyes so he could actually _see_ when he hacked it up, when a dark form slid around the trunk.

“Oh, hello, neighbor,” Stiles said, squinting at the person. “I mean, that’s who you are, right? And not a walking bunch of wet rags?”

Derek crouched on a thick root protruding from the bank, scrubbing at his hair and looking at Stiles as if Stiles was the suspected perambulating pile of soaked rubbish. Then he looked down at the body. “What the hell are you doing?” he said. “Isn’t this your water supply?”

“Well, yes, and I was working on getting rid of it,” Stiles said. “Since I don’t know about you, but Lydia and I aren’t much for the taste of dead cow in our cof—all right. Yeah. That’s one way to do it.”

After reaching down and just wrenching out a root—which was thicker than his very generously muscled arm, quite visible through the clinging shirt—Derek braced himself against the trunk and gave the corpse a kick with his foot. It started to come loose and he reached down again, tossing aside the root, and sank his claws into the hide. Even with all the rain coming down, Stiles could see trapped gases puffing out of the slits and he winced hard, covering his nose and mouth.

Grunting and snorting off the smell, Derek swung the steer the rest of the way clear, then released so that it went soaring over the swollen creek and landed with a loud, disgusting belch on the opposite bank. Its skin ripped open where Derek’s claws had hooked in and Stiles couldn’t help making a face as he looked away from all the stuff spilling out.

“If you’d chopped it up, you would’ve been straining out the bits for a while,” Derek said, back to crouching on the trees. He shook his fingers a few times, and with the Biblical weather going on, that was more than enough to get them clean.

“Thanks. I genuinely appreciate it, even with the side of sarcasm at us poor regular folk who don’t have werewolf arms,” Stiles said. He glanced back at the steer, just long enough to determine that it wouldn’t slide back into the water, and then he shouldered the ax he wouldn’t be using. “Anyway, I’d say have a nice day, but…maybe just work on not wandering into your enemies’ home turf?”

He started to walk away, then yelped as a small wave of mud abruptly crashed over his foot. Then he looked up at Derek, who’d made that wave by leaping over to stand—well, he was close enough that some of the water running off his chin was running right onto Stiles’ front without a break. As if Stiles needed the extra soaking.

“Sorry, slid,” Derek said, edging back a whole inch. He ran his hand through his hair, shook the water off his fingers. Shuffled his face. “So. The other day. I needed that ride out of town.”

“I think you mentioned that when you asked for it,” Stiles said. He rubbed one leg against the other; he didn’t have much hope that the mud would come out, but he at least didn’t want to walk home with a whole extra set of dirt boots over his actual ones. “And if this is some manly, Western way of saying thanks, your uncle already—”

“Yeah, he mentioned.” Derek scruffed his hair yet again, as if he really thought vigorous rubbing might make it look like less of a slick of black oil, and then he sighed. “Anyway, thanks. When are you going again?”

Stiles looked at him. Derek looked back. He wore the rain very nicely, Stiles had to admit, with that strong jaw and the molded shoulders and even the hint of flat belly showing through clinging shirt, but no, it wasn’t worth it.

“Hey,” Derek said, grabbing at Stiles’ arm. “Hey, wait.”

“And that’s just talking about standing out here and getting drenched in freezing rain,” Stiles muttered. “Never mind the fact that we’re not running a smuggling—”

“I wasn’t _asking_ so I could go in with you,” Derek snapped. When Stiles yanked his arm away, he didn’t make another grab, but he did swing in beside Stiles, close enough to send another surge of mud Stiles’ way. “I just—wait, just—look, one second, all right? Can you just stop?”

“God, fine, but it’d better be good,” Stiles said. He swerved under a nearby tree, which cut the downpour from having an ocean dumped on his head to just a lake, and then turned to Derek. “What.”

“The Alphas, they’re all worked up about something, and Peter and I are pretty sure they just took out another pack. Kali and Ennis got back to town last night, and they had a lot of bounty hunters with them,” Derek said. “It’s a bad time to go in, if you’re planning to. Even if you’re not on their bounty list, the hunters always get drunk, and the Alphas basically let them have the whole run of the town.”

That…admittedly sounded like good advice, and also like a solution to Lydia’s desire for news about what was happening in town. If Derek was actually right about it. “How do you know?” Stiles asked. “Is that what you do? You just spend all your time sneaking around town?”

Derek snorted. “No, of course not. But they’d kill us if they found us, so we’d better know where they are. Besides, it’s not like it’s hard to miss when their posse comes back. Some of them start drinking before they hit town, and wander off.”

“And find a spot in the woods to sleep it off, and never actually wake up?” Stiles said.

The grin Derek gave him was very, very wide, and very unpleasant. “They should know better. And it’s not like the Alphas take a headcount. I think they’re actually happy that they don’t have to pay out to everyone.”

“And they get confirmation that somebody’s still running around back here, and not exactly an ally,” Stiles said dryly. Then he waved off whatever Derek had been about to say. “Well, good to know. Thanks. We’ll keep an eye out for the drunken killers, and try not to investigate if we hear anybody screaming.”

Something in the branches overhead moved just then, shaking a bunch of water down onto Stiles. He hissed, then slapped at the icy water sluicing down the back of his neck. Then he just braced himself for more of that and stepped out into the rain.

Or he would have, if Derek hadn’t grabbed his shoulder. “You didn’t say you weren’t going into town.”

“Because I don’t have to,” Stiles said, shaking him off. Then he rubbed at his shoulder, grimacing. Derek had a hard grip. And coming right after the freezing drench, kind of uncomfortably warm, too. “I get what you’re saying, but you don’t have to worry about us. I mean, if something _does_ happen, you get all those steers you rounded up for us. Don’t even need to wait for somebody to butcher them for you.”

“We were thinking you really meant it, saying you just want to settle here and ranch,” Derek said. He made it sound just shy of an accusation, and then he winced and pulled himself back. “Look, just—Peter said you were looking to help Deucalion out.”

“Yeah, because we _do_ want to ranch, and it’s hard to do that if people are trying to kill you,” Stiles snapped. “Giving him a hand on the one thing doesn’t mean we’ll give him a hand on everything, if that’s what you’re worried about. For that matter, why shouldn’t we worry about you two telling him about what we’re really doing out here?”

Derek snarled at him, like that was really such a long shot, then spun on his heel. Two steps and the man did his werewolf magic and vanished into the downpour.

Stiles didn’t bother to wait for him, and just started off towards the house. He did pause at the boundary marker, but when somebody walked out of the brush, it wasn’t Derek.

“I was hoping to catch one of you before my nephew did, but judging from your face, I’m the second to the party,” Peter said. He had a hide of some kind that he was holding over his head to keep off the rain, but he’d been out long enough for the rain to soak up his trousers and blow under the hide, and was just as soaked as Stiles. “May I come in and apologize where it’s warm?”

“You know, usually the person apologizing isn’t so picky about it. But fine, might as well. God knows I don’t want to stand out here any longer, either,” Stiles said, letting him through the wards.

* * *

“Deucalion killed his sister Laura, our alpha after my sister died, right in front of Derek. And that was after unsuccessfully trying to force her to kill Derek and myself. So I think you can see why he’s touchy about the man,” Peter said. He resettled himself where he was sitting on the hearth, then let out a pleased sigh as Lydia topped up the cup of hot coffee he was cradling in both hands. “That said, I have to agree with him. I know what I said before, but being in town right after they’ve killed a pack is dangerous.”

“But we have an appointment,” Lydia said. She wasn’t quite playing dumb, from how she said that, or how she looked at Peter as she leaned past him to hang the kettle over the fire. “Surely he wouldn’t want that interrupted, or delayed.”

Peter gave her an appreciative look, especially as her dress stretched over her bust, but it was a little absentminded. “And I’m sure he knew what he was doing when he set your appointment for the same day they returned. I told you, he’s not a fool.”

“Think he’s hoping to scare us into showing what we are?” Stiles said. He prodded at the last piece of stew meat in his bowl, thinking it over. “So why are you and Derek so interested?”

“Not because we’re hoping to recruit you to our cause, whatever that is these days,” Peter muttered, with surprising bitterness. He raised the mug to his mouth and sipped at the coffee.

Made a pretty good show of covering up spitting that back into the mug, and then he put the coffee down and tucked it up against his still-damp shirt. He smiled at Lydia, who snorted and took a seat next to Stiles on their one bench. “I know it’s bad, you aren’t earning any credit with us that way,” she said.

“Warm bad coffee is better than cold bad coffee, at least. You’re ahead of my nephew there,” Peter said, with a shrug. 

He shifted his cup to one hand and used the other to wring a little more water out of the side of his shirt. The wet, worn cloth barely needed the encouragement to shape out a musculature that had Lydia leaning her head on Stiles’ shoulder and nudging him to look. Even with the scars, Peter was very well-built.

And quick to catch them, looking up with a knowing smile as Lydia stiffened, then smiled rigidly back at him. “Well, obviously Derek and I aren’t quite on the same page here, but at the moment I’m rather enjoying having a friendly neighbor again. It’s very tiresome when everyone you know is either after you, or only refraining so long as you can pay them enough.”

“You might not be trying to convince us to fight them, but you’re certainly looking for some sort of protection,” Lydia translated. “Though I don’t know why we’d look like good prospects. We can’t revive the Nemeton more than we already have without risk to us, and this isn’t the best place to hide, either. They’re interested in us, and unlike you, they already know where this is.”

“True, but that boundary barrier of yours is rather formidable, and I appreciate anything—or anyone—that might give them any sort of pause,” Peter said. He locked eyes with Lydia, face cool and hard, and then he let that crack into a warm smile at both of them. “And I do appreciate dealing with people who consider details like that.”

“Well, I hope you weren’t expecting to move right in,” Stiles said. He slid his arm up around Lydia’s waist, then squeezed it lightly when he saw Peter’s eyes drift down. At the same time, Lydia laid her cheek on Stiles’ shoulder and her hand on his knee. “I’m not sure my wife and I are comfortable with that. We’re still getting used to each other, after all.”

A flicker of irritation went over Peter’s face, but he swiftly crushed that with another smile. “Oh, no, I wouldn’t presume this early in our…acquaintance,” he said. “I’m only asking to be allowed the occasional visit, and exemption from whatever you’re doing with the tree. And in return—well, for your current problem, there really is no reason you have to go all the way into town. The road’s in terrible condition after the rain, it’s perfectly fair to stop and send word to him that you can’t come any farther. He’ll come to meet you.”

“And where would we be stopping?” Lydia asked, brows arched. “I suppose you have a suggestion for that as well?”

“I’d be very foolish to raise the idea if I didn’t,” Peter said dryly. “Use the graveyard.”

Stiles and Lydia were silent. He almost looked at her, but just stopped himself in time. Instead he kept an eye on Peter—and just as well, since Peter’s confidence changed slowly to something no less certain, but much warier, as the silence stretched on.

“It’s close enough to town that you can say you made an effort, but far enough away that any men they’d have with them would be more susceptible to the woods,” Peter said. He paused, and then gave them a knowing nod. “And if I may, I assume that sort of place would actually feel quite friendly to you. There’ve been a good many fresh graves there lately, of the violently, prone to be restless, dead.”

“That does sound like our kind of place,” Stiles said dryly.

“But then, we’ve unusual preferences,” Lydia said. She slipped her arm up and curled her hand over Stiles’ shoulder, sneaking it under her chin. “I suppose you’ll excuse yourself from showing us where it is. You wouldn’t want to go anywhere that’d make you uncomfortable.”

Peter looked at Stiles and then at her. His eyes flicked across Stiles’ chest, where Lydia’s hand was pulling his shirt taut, and at Lydia’s smile, and then he laughed. 

“Oh, I had no expectations that it’d be comfortable in the least, but I would, in fact, be happy to be your guide,” he said, setting his coffee aside. He got to his feet, pulling his clothes where they’d stuck to him and picking up his waterproofed hide, and then was at the door before Stiles had half-risen. “I’ll come back in the morning, and walk you over. Does that suit?”

“That’ll do,” Stiles said, letting him out.

* * *

“You trust him?” Lydia asked.

Stiles looked at her. 

“Well, then I think I should wait with him while you go up to let Deucalion know,” Lydia said. She set her brush down and then bent to blow out the lantern. “Do you think Derek will show up?”

“I’d be surprised if Peter wasn’t dragging him along, when he shows up tomorrow,” Stiles said. He held up the blankets for her to crawl under, then dropped them and tucked her under his arm. “You really want to handle both of them by yourself?”

“I’ll be fine, Stiles,” Lydia said, more than a touch crossly. “I’ve seen more threatening things than their inability to coordinate on a scheme.”

Stiles snorted, resting their foreheads together, and slid his hand over till her fingers wrapped around it, tight and hard. “Not what I meant, but fine. Try not to tease them too much, all right? I don’t want to end up missing the good stuff.”


	4. Chapter 4

The next day, Stiles went out to the boundary while breakfast was cooking, and as promised, Peter was there. Derek wasn’t, at least not visibly, but he showed up with suspicious promptness once they got the wagon out onto the road.

He had a face like somebody was holding a gun to keep him there, and even then, he loitered at the edge of the road or whisked off into the woods for minutes at a time, only to slouch back out from behind a tree further up. Peter gave him a few sharp looks, but otherwise ignored him, occupying himself with chatting with Lydia about herbalry and woods magic. Fairly harmless stuff, although every once in a while Peter would slip in a gruesome anecdote about a practitioner who’d died by picking the wrong mushrooms, or mistaking a cockatrice for a rooster, things like that.

It was all very charming and light and obviously designed to feel out how far Lydia’s knowledge extended, but Lydia found it so funny that Stiles left her to it. He was riding the horse anyway, and it was giving him trouble right from the start, nervy and shying at everything, despite being a seasoned round-up mount who’d supposedly weathered a head-on confrontation with a grizzly a year ago.

“Jumpy,” Derek observed, finally coming close enough for actual conversation. He hopped back as the horse neighed at him, then flashed his fangs at it.

Rolling his eyes, Stiles reined it tightly in, then reached over and twisted the rifle tied to the saddle so it pointed at Derek. “Do you mind?”

Derek snorted, his hands staying down at his sides, but he obligingly closed his mouth. He edged alongside for a while, which didn’t do much for the horse’s peace of mind, and then leaped a small rock to come out a little ahead of Stiles. “It’s not me, you know. It’s all the hunters who’ve been riding this way lately. They killed a lot of weres and you can smell it all over them.”

“Well, fortunately, I don’t have that kind of nose,” Stiles muttered. He batted off an insect going at his neck, then looked up at the sky. 

The rain had died off towards morning, but the clouds were still out in force and the tang of ozone was so strong that even he could taste it. And obviously the road hadn’t dried out, making it slow going for the wagon; their little excuse for Deucalion was going to turn into a real plea for help if they didn’t get to cover soon.

“It’s just over the hill and then about a hundred yards off the road,” Derek said, jerking his chin ahead. “If you couldn’t tell.”

“This isn’t you show me yours, I show you mine,” Stiles said, hearing the suspicion in Derek’s voice. “Anyway, it was your idea.”

“It was _Peter’s_ idea. I just think you should stay away from them.” Then Derek glanced over his shoulder, back at the wagon. His eyes widened slightly and then he flicked them back to Stiles, an oddly sympathetic look on his face. “But I guess he talked you into it. Your wife, anyway.”

Stiles didn’t bother looking back before he grinned. “It’s so cute how he thinks Lydia’s really listening to him. Well, it’s cute how you both think that, but he’s really working at it.”

Derek frowned. He also angled outward, drifting away from Stiles, and for a few moments it seemed like he was going to pull another disappearing act. Then he corrected himself with an abrupt swerve—overcorrected, startling the horse again. And when it stamped its feet and shied, he grabbed onto Stiles’ stirrup and stayed close up, staring so fiercely that Stiles dropped a hand from the reins and onto the rifle butt.

“Are you helping us or not?” Derek demanded. “Because we’ve been through enough hell—”

“Jesus, you just don’t get the idea of staying out of it, do you?” Stiles said. He twisted the rifle around and levered the side of it into Derek, pushing him off. Then he got a good handful of the horse’s mane and leaned over its neck, shushing and petting it till it stopped dancing.

“Stiles?” Peter was calling. When Stiles looked back, there was real concern straining under the man’s curious look, and it wasn’t because Peter had spotted how Lydia was fingering the very long, sharp pin decorating her hair bun. “Is my nephew bothering you?”

“No,” Derek said. He walked half-twisted around for a few paces, him and his uncle having some kind of silent argument, and then he snorted and turned back forward, while Peter reluctantly resumed his talk with Lydia. He glanced at Stiles again, wary but simmering for now, and then he shrugged stiffly. “I do get it. I didn’t even want to ask you for anything—that was his idea too. But I’m not the only one who might think that’s taking a side.”

“And you don’t think we see that?” Stiles asked.

Derek shrugged again. “No, I do, but I don’t trust you either. I don’t know why Peter even thinks you’ll do anything you promised. We barely know you, and _he_ keeps complaining I trust too quick.”

“True. God knows why you thought we’d get you out of town and all,” Stiles said.

A branch rolled under Derek’s foot. Something like that. Certainly he’d never just stumble over his own feet, strong, scowling werewolf that he was. “I figured if you weren’t going to help, you’d at least be a distraction,” he finally said.

Stiles tried not to laugh too obviously. “Oh, all right, I see. Attack the greenhorn and watch him scream and flail.”

“We already saw you with the tree. It was more like, attack the person with unknown powers and see what happens.” Derek paused and cocked his head, but whatever he’d heard wasn’t a threat and he didn’t even break stride. “And before you point it out, whatever you’d do couldn’t be any worse than what’s already happened. It’d definitely be a lot quicker than the Alphas if they caught me.”

“You have a very disturbing way of looking at the world,” Stiles said after a moment. “You don’t even know what we are. I’m sure Peter has guesses, but…yeah. Guesses.”

Derek looked over again, studying Stiles for long enough that Stiles twice had to fight back the urge to jibe him. And then, unexpectedly, the man flashed a black, bitter, but very lively grin at him. “I thought you liked him. You and your wife.”

“Well, he’s more likable than you, so far,” Stiles shrugged. “Why? Do you want me to not like him?”

That…maybe pushed it over the edge, even though he hadn’t meant anything by it, had just tossed out the words. But Derek started, eyes widening and then narrowing. He took a step away from Stiles, glancing over his shoulder and then looking back at Stiles. Then he shook himself, and in a second he was several yards off, in the woods by the road.

“I’m not getting any closer,” he said. “There are too many people I cared about buried in it.”

“It’s not a place we’re fond of,” Peter said, unnecessarily, when the wagon drew level with Stiles a few minutes later. He was nervous enough to be fidgeting with a fraying claw, although when he realized he’d been caught, he casually stripped off the sheath and then slipped it into his pocket. “Just there, you can see it—that white streak, where lightning struck the tree, that is the south corner. And…I suppose I’ll also be taking my leave now.”

Stiles checked the sky again, and then looked at the empty woods around him, Peter and Lydia. “Well, nobody’s making you stay. If you are staying.”

Peter hesitated, but in the end he climbed off the wagon. He left his hand on the bench, looking between Lydia and Stiles. 

“I’m sure it’ll be entertaining, but I’m a little long in the tooth to be risking myself for mere curiosity,” he said, with a slight drop of his head. 

“You’re not going to even watch?” Stiles said. “After all this trouble?”

Peter smiled tightly at him, but pulled his hand off the wagon. He gave his neck a quick, pointed rub, pushing his shirt-collar from his scars, and then took a backwards step. “Tempting. Very tempting, Stiles, but no. But I do wish you good luck.”

And then Stiles and Lydia were by themselves. “Better that way,” Lydia said after a moment. “At least we don’t have to keep an eye out for them. We don’t know whether Deucalion will come with just the other alphas, or he’ll bring some of these drunken hunters.”

“Well, far as the hunters go, I’ll just try and be quick about it. I’ll tell him the stuff will go bad if he waits for them to sober up, or something like that,” Stiles muttered. He kneed the horse, wanting it to step off the road and towards the tree.

It didn’t move. He kneed it again, then was about to slap the reins when he noticed the foamy streaks that were now dappling its hide. He touched one, then tossed the reins to Lydia and dismounted. Stiles laid his hand against the horse, trembling and frozen with fright, and then he took it off. Wiped away the sweat, pulled out his knife, and walked into the woods to look at the cemetery.

The usual for this area. Part of it had been leveled, or at least, people had tried to level and clear the area, but the surrounding trees had grown in again, pushing up graves and setting markers to tilting every which way. It had a small, unkempt rail fence around it, but near the lightning-blasted tree, the rails had fallen down completely. But nobody was there, and there was nothing particularly disturbing about it. Maybe the wind seemed to quaver a little, maybe there was the odd flicker at the edge of his vision, but all of that was to be expected, what with the Nemeton. He certainly didn’t see anything he wasn’t already familiar with.

Stiles shrugged and walked back into the road, then took the reins back from Lydia. When he gave them an experimental tug, the horse nearly took off, so eager was it to get off to town.

“I think—” Stiles grunted, hauling it back.

Then he stopped. Lydia was still sitting on the bench and she wasn’t stiff or pale, but she did have an odd look on her face. It wasn’t quite her trance, but—she started out of it, just as Stiles reached for her. Then shook herself angrily, lifting one hand to press at her forehead.

“Go ahead. I’ll disable the wagon,” Lydia said. When he paused, she jerked her hand towards him and then back just as violently. Then she sighed. “Nothing. It was nothing. Just…I was remembering for a moment. That last picnic we all had, under that tree with the streak—I don’t know why.”

Stiles pressed his lips together. He looked around again, but there was nothing. And the tension in his shoulders, making the back of his neck prickle, that wasn’t real. That was just him trying to not remember either, now that she’d brought it up.

“Just go. Go, and get this over with,” Lydia muttered. She hiked up her skirts and climbed down from the wagon, turning her back on him. The last he saw of her, she was expertly breaking one of the pins that held the wheel onto the wagon’s axle.

* * *

When Stiles arrived in town, the first thing he saw were the bloody skins. They were hanging from poles somebody had set up right by the road. Bit of a hack job, with huge chunks of flesh still clinging to them, he noted as he rode by.

Beacon Hills was overflowing. Men stumbled along the boardwalks or slumped over the rails, while the saloons and the brothels were blazing with light. Every other window was dark, and more than a few had curtains tightly drawn over them, but those couple buildings more than made up for it, pouring so much light into the street that it almost looked like midday before them.

Stiles dismounted and led his horse by the reins, keeping to the darker side of the street as much as he could. Initially he’d planned to just stay near the edge of town, and ask somebody else to go get Deucalion, but looking around, he doubted he’d get help. So new plan, he’d just skulk over to the sheriff’s office, which had lit windows but a distinct absence of soused men near it, and hope a sober alpha was in it.

It mostly worked. He heard a few confused and curious comments, but he’d almost made it when somebody called more harshly after him. Well, actually, they called for him to show who the hell he was, because he’d sure as hell not ridden with them, and a couple insults about his parents into the bargain. Stiles slowed but didn’t stop, eyeing the way that men on either side of the street were starting to look over. The man called after him again, stridently demanding that he show his fucking face or get a hole in it.

Stiles paused, then turned slowly around. He was just level with the sheriff’s office now, and somebody was moving in front of the window. “Yes?” he said.

The man was holding a gun on him. Swaying worse than a willow in a cross-breeze, but the hammer was cocked, and Stiles could tell the man meant to pull the trigger.

Until he was suddenly picked up and tossed clear across the street, into a rail that immediately broke and then dumped his limp body on the boardwalk. Kali stepped out where he’d been dusting off her hands, and she was crossing the street when the door opened behind Stiles. “Oh, so you did come,” Deucalion said, all surprised worry. “Considering the weather, we _were_ thinking you might not show.”

“Bargain’s a bargain,” Stiles said, mustering up as much cheerfulness as he could. He got more than enough, judging from the bemused expression on Deucalion’s face. “Though I had to leave Lydia and the stuff back at the wagon—one of the linchpins broke. I figured it’d be faster if I rode ahead and brought you to her. The roads are so bad, and it was already a miracle the bottles didn’t break when the pin did. We didn’t want to tempt fate again.”

“Quite sensible of you. It would be a shame if you injured yourselves while performing such a kind gesture,” Deucalion said, nodding sympathetically. “Well, do come in, get warm. I can see that the rain caught you, and I do believe that that’s only the start of the night.”

Stiles made a show of hesitating, even though Kali had come up and already pulled his horse’s reins from him. “Lydia’s out there on her own,” he said. “I don’t like—I didn’t honestly want to leave her in the first place, but—”

“Oh, I’m quite sure she’ll be all right. We’ve just cleared out the area—celebrating, as you can see, ridding the place of yet another band of vagrants and robbers.” Deucalion swept his hand out to indicate the carousing, which hadn’t stopped in the least, with men simply stumbling right over the still form of the man Kali had thrown. With his other hand, he took Stiles by the arm and drew him into the office. “You can wait here for now, where it’s warm and dry. We’ll return you to your wife, but we just need a few minutes to call…”

He looked at Kali, who smiled tightly. “I’ll go collect Aiden and Ethan,” she said. “I think Ennis might be…unfit for this.”

“Yes, well, he had quite the reason to indulge, didn’t he?” Deucalion said, smiling.

“Big catch?” Stiles said. He stepped over so that Deucalion could close the door; a second later, Kali went by the window, heading for the saloon across the street.

“Oh, yes, a man we’ve been after for some time. His… _gang_ …was responsible for the brutal— _brutal_ , absolutely brutal—murder of a very close friend of Ennis’, and also for my own loss of sight,” Deucalion said. He picked up his cane from where it’d been leaning against the wall, but just held it loosely in his hand as he walked over, pulled out a chair from the wall for Stiles, and then went over to the big desk in the corner. His eyes weren’t red; he was doing it from memory. “What’s more, we’d thought he’d fled the country, and would never see justice. So it was quite a nice surprise to come across him while we were rooting out the latest band of miscreants.”

Stiles went ahead and sat down. He patted at the damp patches on his coat, then turned up a beaming smile when Deucalion turned in his direction. “That _does_ sound exciting,” he said. “It’s just like something out of the papers.”

Deucalion paused, his hand still in the desk drawer. His eyes went from milky to slightly pink. He stayed relaxed, but there was an edge to his tone that hadn’t been present before. And the skin under his eyes, Stiles was interested to note, was a little puffy and dark, as if he hadn’t been sleeping well. “You make a very charming pair, you and your wife,” he said, taking out a large ring of keys. “But may I just suggest something?”

“You’re the mayor,” Stiles said. “Anything you might want to say must be important.”

“Quite.” Smiling, the keys jingling softly in his hand, Deucalion came back around the desk and up till he was just a foot in front of Stiles. His cane tip swung out, almost grazing Stiles’ shin, and then thumped sharply into the floor between Stiles’ feet. “Well, it’s merely a suggestion, of course. But do remember that inexperience, however brave, may often be mistaken for deliberate offense.”

He kept his head up, not even trying to point his face in Stiles’ direction. Then he withdrew, his cane swinging around before him. He just had his hand on the door when Stiles cleared his throat.

“We definitely don’t want to offend anybody,” Stiles said. “We just want to work out my inheritance. And honestly, I might be new here, but I really don’t think you want any part in that. I mean…we’re so deep in the woods. And you have a nice thing here, in town.”

Deucalion’s head turned slightly, but not enough for Stiles to see his expression. The man’s back and shoulders stayed as they were, confident and loose, and without another word, he went out of the office.

The lock clicked after him, which saved Stiles a little trouble. That’d keep off the hunters, but it certainly wouldn’t keep him in if he really wanted to break out. Actually, the whole office, even the two empty cells in the back, was…showpiece only, he figured after a quick look around. No real barriers of any kind. 

Stiles had a few minutes to kill, so he dropped back into the chair. Then he dug into his pockets and pulled out a piece of string, the ends of which he knotted together, and he started amusing himself with a game of cat’s cradle. If they’d been closer to the tree, he maybe would’ve wetted the string with a drop of his own blood, and seen if he could help along the nightmares. But from the looks of things, that didn’t need any prodding tonight.

A fusillade of gunshots and then several screams started up outside. He glanced at the window, watching as a staggering pair of men, one bleeding from his shoulder, both clearly soused to their ears, took haymaking swings at each other. Stiles sighed, twisted his thumb into a loop of string and then pulled his hands apart, drawing the string taut so that two loops snapped towards each other, right as one punch finally connected.

His head snapped back viciously, the bright crack of bone echoing across the street, and then he dropped like a sack of stones. Stiles shook out the string into a single large loop, then twisted it back around his fingers, just as the screams started up again.

* * *

It took a little longer than a few minutes, but not so long that Stiles was thinking about breaking out when they came back for him. Still, by the time they started out, it was raining again. It was just a drizzle all the way till they got to the wagon and Lydia. And while Deucalion had them sample a drop from every bottle of the tincture before he took it—Lydia had a lot of trouble keeping her contempt from showing; if he didn’t know what they were, he didn’t know what would poison them—and while the Alphas rode back towards town, without even offering to help with the wagon wheel. But then the skies opened up and once again, it was a deluge. Only this time no werewolves showed up, not even a mistrustful beta.

“We should just be happy they didn’t stick around to ask questions,” Stiles muttered as they finally started back towards the ranch. “It’s a good sign, right? That they didn’t want to stay out here any longer than they had to?”

Lydia made an irritable noise. They’d taken along oiled hides to cover themselves with, but they could only use them once they’d gotten the wheel in order. And by then they were so wetted through that Stiles didn’t even bother to use his hide. He tried to pass it to Lydia, but she shrugged him off and just grimly urged on the ox.

It was slow, and muddy, and dark. A couple times Stiles almost wished something _would_ attack them, just so that he had a reason to—but he took a deep breath, pushed that away, and just trudged on beside the wagon, chivvying the grumpy horse along. One step at a time, he told himself. That was what had gotten them across the country.

And it was what got them to the ranch, the sky starting to lighten with day but still pouring down endless rain. After helping Stiles put the ox and horse to stable, Lydia finally grew so fed up with it that she simply unfastened her dress, stripped it off, and then walked from stable to house in just her shift. As for Stiles, he didn’t even look after her. Just pulled off his coat and shirt too—he had to peel the cloth up with his nails, it was so sodden—and then tossed it through the open back door to Lydia.

She’d walked in without taking off her shoes, leaving a muddy trail across the floor that they’d have to clean later. Stiles was tempted to do the same, but her feet were only covered in mud; she’d been sitting up on the wagon most of the time. His boots, on the other hand, were practically encased in it. So he scrunched into the small overhang that the roof made, leaning against the wall for balance, and he was reaching down to pull them off when a sudden crash of lightning whited out everything.

Stiles started and his head came up, and as the flash cleared, he saw somebody standing in the trees. Somebody he knew.

“What?” Lydia snapped, appearing in the doorway. She looked out at the woods, rifle in one hand and the other reaching to clasp Stiles’ shivering shoulder. “What happened?”

“I…I thought I saw…” Then Stiles shut his mouth. They’d checked and rechecked the goddamn wards, he told himself.

“Him?” Lydia said harshly.

Stiles didn’t want to, but he finally nodded. He dropped his hands to his knees and leaned hard on them. He hadn’t even shouted that loud, but his throat already hurt from it. “Yeah, I looked over and…”

They looked over again. Then Lydia swung the rifle up, while Stiles straightened up. Because there _was_ somebody out there, a pale body slumped up against a tree, with streaks of blood showing over their back. But it sure as hell wasn’t anybody they knew.

Lydia stepped over the threshold, still aiming it, as Stiles carefully eased back into the rain. He made his way across the intervening distance, going wide as he got nearer to keep out of lunging range. 

That proved to be a good choice when the person lifted their head and showed glowing blue eyes. It was a man, starved-looking, with a number of injuries in various stages of healing showing through his tattered, soaked clothes, and he hunched up against the tree but looked blankly at Stiles, as if he wasn’t even sure Stiles was something living. He was blond, and didn’t look remotely related to Peter and Derek.

He shifted, hissing something under his breath, and Stiles heard the clink of metal. The man’s eyes flared hotly, as if he was about to leap out, and then they rolled back into his head and he fell over, limbs spilling slackly to show a pair of manacles on his wrists, and a broken one on one ankle.

Stiles waited out a ten-count, but the man was as still as a rock. He went over, keeping one hand on his knife, and felt for a pulse. Then he pushed up the man’s chin and peeled back the eyelids. After that, he squatted back and thought about it, and about what Deucalion had said. And about their attempts to delay the inevitable.

“Is he dead?” Lydia called to him.

“No,” Stiles muttered. He looked at the man again. A long cut on the side of his face, like an alpha claw had caught him during a slap, was sluggishly bleeding, streaking over his closed eye.

It was just like—Stiles hissed, blinking hard, willing that face to go away, and the memory faded. But the hairs on the back of his neck were still stiff, despite the constant wash of water over them. They felt like needles when he rubbed his hand over them, looking around.

The woods were empty. Stiles looked at the man again, then sighed and moved to get one arm over his shoulder. “This is a bad, bad, _bad_ idea, but even if you’re a sadistic asshole, I guess you don’t deserve to get mixed into that. If…damn it, Stiles, stop talking about it. Stop talking, stop remembering, just _stop_ …”

“Stiles?” Lydia called. She was still too far away to hear his mumbles, but it must have been showing on his face, because she put the rifle down and took a step out to meet him.

He jerked his head at her, motioning her back, and made himself shut up. After a moment, Lydia picked up the rifle again, but just to take it into the house. She came back, helping him get the man over the threshold, and then to lay him down in front of the fire.

“Beta?” she guessed.

Stiles nodded. “Odds that he’s the man Deucalion was talking about?”

“Well, he’s already in the house,” Lydia said after a long moment. She turned around, wringing her hand into a tight tail, and sat on the hearth in front of the man. She pressed her lips together, rubbing at the side of her face, frustrated and bitter, and for a second he thought she might order him to carry the man back out. But then her shoulders slumped, and Lydia simply looked exhausted. “And he already made it to our boundary. We’d have to hide him even if he was dead.”

Her eyes flicked over his injuries. Then she reached behind herself, swinging the bar out from the fireplace so she could reach the pot hanging from it. She glanced into it, then got up again and started gathering up herbs.

Stiles stood over the man for a second, then sighed and turned around. He went back out, took off his boots, and then came in. Then he set to helping Lydia deal with their guest.


	5. Chapter 5

Cleaned up, his wounds treated, and given a shave and a haircut—they had to shave off part of his cheek to get at a cut, and then Stiles just kept going with the razor, since Lydia needed him to hold the man’s head anyway—the man looked slightly better than he’d appeared at first. His gut was flat, not bloated out, so he hadn’t been starving for too long, and his faint eventually turned into a deep, but natural sleep. He curled himself up as close as he could get to the wall, leaving Stiles and Lydia the rest of the bed.

They’d debated making up a pallet and chaining him to the fireplace, the sturdiest part of the house, but one, they didn’t have the bedding to spare for even that much, and two, anybody who walked in, or even looked in the windows, would see him right away. The bedroom was the room with the sturdiest shutters.

“I don’t really feel like sleeping yet anyway, I can stay up,” Stiles said, just as a yawn caught him.

Lydia didn’t even look at him. She just threw the blanket over his head, and then crawled on top of him while he was still trying to pull that off, and suddenly Stiles was opening his eyes and it was at least midday, probably later. And Lydia was still on him, but she was nodding off even as she gave him an exasperated look.

Stiles badly needed to get up, but he waited for her to fall completely asleep before he worked himself out from under her. Then he started to get off the bed, only to notice that the man was awake and staring at him.

“So we didn’t tie you up or anything because we don’t need to. And we’d really appreciate not having to bloody the one bed we’ve got, so…” Stiles said slowly.

A faint flicker of amusement went over the man’s face. “Your wife already went through that with me,” he said. His voice was less raspy than Stiles would’ve expected; Lydia must have given him a drink, and maybe something to eat, too. “Thank you. And I’m sorry.”

“Sorry?” Stiles said. He hunted up the waste bucket, used it, and then, after a glance over, carried it over to the side of the bed.

The man had already sobered, but at that his face twisted, almost like he was in pain. He pushed himself back, then shook his head and slowly crawled out of the blankets to position himself before the bucket. After he’d used it, he just sat there, his head low, his hands hanging between his knees, as Stiles lifted the bucket away.

“For the trouble you’re about to get into,” he finally said.

“I think you need to be more specific than that,” Stiles said. And stood there, waiting, till the man got the point and looked up. “Come on. I need to do some things in the other room and I’m not leaving you alone with her.”

The man looked a little curious—Stiles bet Lydia had just left the door between the rooms open—but immediately got up. He reached back towards the bed, hesitated, and then pulled his hand in and just walked stiffly out into the next room as he was. Which was naked, and he looked so grateful when Stiles tossed him a spare shirt that Stiles couldn’t help it. “You were bit, weren’t you?”

“Yes,” the man said warily. He paused, then slumped down against the wall, watching Stiles put the waste bucket outside the door and then come back in. “I’m Chris Argent.”

“Argent?” Stiles said.

The man winced, but kept his eyes on Stiles. “Yes. Heard of us?”

“Some.” Mostly his sister and father—Peter had mentioned Gerard’s son, but only in passing, and the fleeing druid hadn’t mentioned him at all. Stiles checked the pot Lydia had left simmering on the fire, then got himself a helping and sat down on the hearth to eat it. “Not much about you, except that you left years ago.”

Chris grimaced and sank a little further against the wall. He was silent for a while, not even moving till Stiles set a bowl by him, and even then he just twitched his head over to stare at it, hunger slamming up against a strangely strong disgust in his eyes.

“We were in Canada,” Chris abruptly said, as Stiles sat down with a brush, a knife and a bowl of water to clean off his and Lydia’s shoes. “My fam—my wife and daughter. Not hunting—well, I was, but game. I was a fur trader. If you heard about what my sister did here—I didn’t want any part of that, and I didn’t want my daughter raised into it like I was. So I packed them up and we didn’t do it anymore.”

“Hunting werewolves?” Stiles said.

Chris winced again. He shifted, absently tucking his shirt-tails between his legs, and then he pushed himself off the wall and picked up the bowl of food. He moved heavy, not as if he was lacking the strength for it, but as if he was thinking about every inch he moved. “You won’t believe me, but I thi—I thought that there’s a right and a wrong way to do it,” he said. “My family wasn’t doing it right.”

Stiles held out the boot and shook off the dust onto a handkerchief he’d laid out for it, then went back to scraping at the crusts. “Then how’d you end up a werewolf?”

“I killed someone,” Chris said, after a long silence. He started to eat, his head still down, the spoon moving between his mouth and the bowl like a metronome. He took a bite, said a sentence, and then repeated it, all the while sounding completely numb. “A werewolf. Way back when I was hunting them. It was—you don’t need the details. Just that I did it the way I thought it should be done, but their pack disagreed. And caught up with us in Canada. Killed Vic—killed my wife and daughter, turned me.”

Stiles frowned. “How long have you been a werewolf?”

“What year is it?” Chris asked, as if that was perfectly normal. When Stiles told him, Chris blinked a few times, then asked for the month. “Then about six months. They—I wasn’t _pack_ to them, all right? They didn’t—anyway, they came down here, I’m guessing because they heard the local packs were dying out, and the Alphas came through, and I think you can guess the rest.”

“Alphas killed them, took you, were going to kill you except…and there my imagination runs out,” Stiles said. He flicked off a curl of dried mud, then switched to the brush to scrub off the dirt that remained.

Chris pressed his lips together and stopped eating. He held onto the bowl for a few more minutes, and then he abruptly twisted over. He almost put it down, changed his mind, and then…got up and walked halfway across the room. Paused there, then dropped down and sort of shuffled the rest of the way, using an awkward rocking motion that made more sense once Stiles realized the man was crawling on his hands and knees without actually putting his hands down.

He deposited the bowl by Stiles, then sat back. Watched Stiles work, shifting uneasily, and then he reached tentatively over and touched Lydia’s shoe. Stiles slowed his hands, but didn’t stop the man, and after a second, Chris picked up the shoe. He flicked out a claw and started to work on the mud stuck to its sole.

“I’m not sure, actually,” Chris finally said. “They had me chained up, with guards, and then—well, I could hear the rest of them raising hell, but the guards were sober. But they were—they were jumpy. Started acting like they were hearing voices, and then they got in a fight with each other over it. Broke enough things that I got out.”

Stiles shrugged. “Guess you got lucky. I was up in town too, but I just saw…well, maybe they were too drunk to be hearing ghosts, or whatever that was.”

Chris let out a short, mirthless laugh. And a little absent; he was looking more closely at Stiles, his head rising as he thought that over. “She’s a banshee,” he said. He paused when Stiles looked up, dropping his head again. “She had a little trance while you were sleeping. Wasn’t long, nothing happened to her. And I’d just say that you’re a magic-worker of some kind, but…I ended up running this way because I thought I saw All—I thought I saw my daughter. She was running ahead of me, and then she disappeared, right as you showed up, and you were looking at me like—like you’d seen a ghost too. But you’ve never met her.”

“No,” Stiles said shortly. He just kept himself from looking for Lydia. “Can’t say that I have.”

“You don’t act like somebody who’s just haunted either, you were staring like you were expecting it,” Chris said slowly. “Ghosts aren’t that predictable. Did you have a run-in with a demon?”

Stiles dropped the knife. Then swore, snatching it back up, and he ended up dropping the boot while doing that, because he forgot how many damn hands he actually had. And then he jumped up and he…did not stalk outside, because that would be stupid. Leaving Lydia alone with a goddamn beta werewolf who used to be the kind of hunter that Deucalion would slaughter through a whole pack to get at.

“Goddamn it. Damn it, I’m—I’m sorry,” Chris said. He pulled in on himself as Stiles spun to look at him. Didn’t drop the shoe like Stiles had, but his hands were shaking as he set it down, and his voice was starting to get a weird thin undernote, breathy and pleading. “Sorry. I didn’t mean—it doesn’t matter. It’s—Jesus Chris, it’s not like I can—”

“If you say that to anybody, _anybody_ , we’ll kill you,” Stiles hissed, grabbing Chris by the shoulder. Then by the chin, forcing the man to look at him. “You hear me? You say the words ‘demon’ and me in the same sentence, and you’re dead.”

Chris nodded, bumping his jaw into Stiles’ hand. His breathing was speeding up and his eyes were wide, and just before Stiles jerked his hand back, a whine broke from him. It couldn’t be called anything else.

Stiles slapped his hand against his hip, staring, and Chris knotted himself up again. He was trembling, but he looked a little confused too, and maybe embarrassed. His cheeks had flushed up some, though that could’ve just been from sitting by the fire. It wasn’t like Stiles had been regularly checking his face color.

Not that that’d be a hardship. Chris was handsome, even with gaunt cheeks and shaky hands, and if they were going to be keeping him in the house, they could at least enjoy that. And Stiles wasn’t really as comforted by that thought as he’d like, to be honest.

He sat back down and yanked up the boot. Scrubbed it hard, till the burn in his forearm and elbow worked off some of his nerves, and then he took a deep breath. Let it out, and dropped the boot and picked up the other one. “What do you know about demons?”

“Not a lot. It wasn’t my—the old families tend to specialize,” Chris said hesitantly. “We went after werewolves. But if it was hurting people, we’d—we’d look into it. So we’ve come across a few. I’ve only ever handled one myself, and that was a very long time ago, and I wasn’t in charge of the hunt. Mostly I’ve just read.”

“Read what?” Stiles snapped.

“That some demons possess people, or pretend to be them to lure you in,” Chris said, watching Stiles intently. “That even if you exorcise them, you sometimes keep a…a link. That some people end up connected to one their whole lives.”

“That seems like an awful lot of detail,” Lydia said from the doorway. She looked calm, but she was twisting her ring around her finger.

Stiles didn’t start. Chris did, and then he moved as if he was going to get off the hearth. He stopped the moment she waved him back, but turned his head to track her as she went to the water barrel for a drink.

“That’s about it,” Chris said. “I don’t think I could remember all of the exorcism ritual we used that one time, and…and I don’t have anything from my family left. My father kept most of it anyway, and set it all on fire before Deucalion killed him.”

“Did any of the alphas ask you about demons when they had you?” Lydia said, coming back.

She looked haggard, with dark circles under her eyes and a tightness to her mouth that Stiles didn’t like, but he just moved over so that she could sit on his other side. Which slid him within a few inches of Chris, but Chris just stiffened and didn’t move.

“No,” Chris said. “They don’t know what you are?”

“I do, and now you do, apparently,” Lydia said. She leaned around Stiles to look at him. “And that is _it_.”

“Yeah, he said,” Chris said, with a nod to Stiles.

“So let’s not talk about it anymore,” Stiles said. He finished with his boot, then picked up Lydia’s shoe.

He had to wait to get the brush, because she’d leaned her head against his shoulder. She moved it a few times and he thought she was trying to look at Chris again, and then he realized she’d dozed off again. Stiles pressed his lips together, then put down her shoe. He tucked his knife into one of his boots, then carefully twisted around so that he could get her and them up, and carry both into the bedroom.

When he came back out, Chris was working on Lydia’s shoes with the brush. Chris looked up, hunching, pushing the shoes slightly out. Then blinked hard as, sighing, Stiles just left him to it and slid past him to put more wood on the fire.

“Well, I guess we’ve got our first house guest,” Stiles muttered. He ignored however Chris was looking at him, and how it was making his skin prickle, and crossed the room to check where their clothes from last night were hanging up. “Just don’t wake her up again. We were out all night, she needs it.”

“All right,” Chris said quietly, still working on the shoes.

* * *

Chris was—well, he didn’t take up a lot of room, and he wasn’t loud, or picky, or really, very talkative when they weren’t directly asking him questions. He did eat a lot, though he tried not to out of some mix of guilt and fear, and obviously, being a werewolf, he needed a lot more fresh meat than they did. So once the rain had stopped, Stiles went out and killed one of the steers.

“You’re not taking it to the tree?” Then Derek side-stepped the knife Stiles threw at him. “I wasn’t even touching you.”

“But you were sneaky, and I am very tired, and I would just appreciate it if you didn’t do that for a while,” Stiles said. He raised his hand, caught himself before he rubbed blood all over his face, and then just trudged by Derek to retrieve the knife, which he needed to finish dressing the steer.

He was picking that up when a twig snapped. Stiles jerked around and Derek ducked into a crouch. Then, very deliberately, the man shuffled over another twig. And another one, till he’d worked himself around to where Stiles had left off peeling back the hide.

“Well, credit for the effort,” Stiles sighed, coming back to the steer.

Derek snorted, but didn’t say anything. He just shucked his coat, rolled up his sleeves, popped his claws, and demonstrated how much quicker werewolves skinned things. Very impressive, interesting, all that—Stiles tried to tuck his yawn into his shoulder, and just shifted over so he could cut the meat he needed.

“That there, feel free to help yourself,” he said, nodding at where he’d piled up the guts. He’d just kept back part of the liver.

Derek glanced over, his hands busy with cutting the hide into two equal halves, and then he sat back. He shook the scraps off his claws and ducked his head, turning it this way and that. When Stiles finally gave in and turned to face him, he straightened up but kept peering for something. “You look fine.”

Stiles smiled weakly. Maybe werewolves had different standards of fatigue, but when he’d washed up earlier, the face reflected in the water bowl had had bloodshot eyes and a grayish, exhausted tinge. And that’d been before he’d killed the steer.

“Aside from not looking like you slept much, but you look a lot better than we thought you would,” Derek amended. He took his half of the hide over to the entrails and began picking through them. “The whole town’s in an uproar, and the Alphas are taking out hunters into the woods all around. Didn’t you notice?”

“Must’ve happened after we parted ways,” Stiles said, shrugging. He cut off one last chunk and piled it onto his hide, then stabbed the knife into the ground and did his best to wipe his hands off on the surrounding grass. “They didn’t help with the broken wheel, so Lydia and I didn’t get back till late. And then all we’ve done since is dry off and sleep, so I’ve got no idea what might be going on.”

“A lot of drunk men running around and beating each other up, which wouldn’t be news except that they had a prisoner who escaped in the middle of it all, and now Deucalion’s furious. Enough that he’s making people go into the woods, even though they’re all complaining about seeing things,” Derek said. Once he’d tied up his takings, he gave his fingers a quick licking and then dried them on the ground. Then he started to get up with his hide, only to stop and frown when he saw how much Stiles was leaving. “You killed that whole steer just for that much?”

Stiles was struggling to get the hide wrapped around his portion, and could only jerk his head at the remaining meat. “Help yourself, you usually do.”

“I can’t. I just told you, they’re combing the woods for him. The prisoner they lost,” Derek said irritably. He shifted uneasily, looking around, and then glared at Stiles again. “They’ll probably be riding out this way in a few hours. I shouldn’t even be here, but we just wanted to know if you made it back in one piece.”

“And once you came, I guess you couldn’t help getting yourself a snack,” Stiles muttered. In retrospect, maybe he should have just sucked up the extra effort and hunted up something smaller, like a rabbit or…no, he’d purposefully not done that, because he’d already thought about hungover, spooked hunters roaming around with a mandate to fix their mistake or get killed. He’d just forgotten.

God, he was tired. He sat back, trying to muffle his yawn in his arm, and then swore as the damned hide slipped out of his fingers, spilling out meat.

Derek irritably blew out his breath. Stiles looked up, but the man had already crouched down. He poked around in the steer, tugged out a tendon that he cut away, and then came over to Stiles. In a few deft motions, he pushed the meat back into the hide, tied the pouch with the tendon, and then pushed the neat bundle at Stiles.

“We could use the meat,” he said after a second. He still looked annoyed, but his shoulders were hunching awkwardly and he wasn’t quite looking Stiles in the eye. “We’re going to have to hole up till they stop riding out, can’t hunt like this. And when we’re stuck in like that, Peter gets…he could’ve used some more of that stuff you made for him.”

“Well, sorry, I don’t have any on hand. We had to use all the liquor we had left for Deucalion’s stuff,” Stiles said. He rubbed at an itchy spot on his nose with his forearm, then yawned yet again. “Surprised he didn’t come himself to see. He put so much energy into it.”

“Yeah, that’s why he couldn’t.” Then Derek grimaced, as if he actually was regretting his grumpy tone for once. “He doesn’t usually go that far. His back seized up.”

The damn yawn seemed to go on and on, till Stiles could have sworn that his jaw was coming loose. When it finally ended, Stiles sucked in his breath and then rubbed at his eyes with the clean side of his wrist. “I guess that’s nice of you, coming over and checking for him, even if you think this is all a horrible idea.”

“I don’t think—well, it’s not a great idea, but then there aren’t a lot of things you can do about the Alphas,” Derek muttered. He abruptly shifted back, grabbing up his pack of meat and then getting to his feet, and then stopped. “Peter and I usually don’t get along, but he’s the only family, only _pack_ I’ve got left. And we’ve seen people come in before, looking like they might be able to do something, and all that ever happens is they die and we’re a little worse off. I’m just looking for that to not happen again.”

“I can’t do anything about what other people did,” Stiles said slowly. “But you know, _you’re_ the ones who came up to us.”

“Because Peter still thinks we might…” Derek cut himself off, looking morose and angry at the same time, and then half-turned to go. Then he stopped again. “He’s trying to use you, and I can’t blame you for doing something about it. But that doesn’t mean you have to use him, and—”

“What makes you think we’re doing that?” Stiles said.

“Well, I don’t know that you _aren’t_. And till I’m sure, I’m going to assume you are,” Derek said sharply. He took a step away, then grimaced and reversed himself. “Though the meat’s good, and that stuff you make for him—it works a lot better than anything else we’ve tried.”

Stiles couldn’t help laughing, Derek looked so uncomfortable. He’d seen people relax more during torture. “I guess I can stop waiting for your thank-you now,” he said. “You’re welcome. And if you want to come back and get the rest of the steer, feel free. Otherwise I’m just going to cut it up and drag it off far enough so that it doesn’t bring animals up to the house.”

“If you’re going to do that, I might as well drag it with me,” Derek said. He was so grudging about it that Stiles didn’t even realize it was an offer until Derek stooped and got the steer by a leg.

“Oh, no, go—well, go whatever way you feel like, but I was going to drag it that way,” Stiles said, half-starting to his feet. He dropped back down just as Derek let go of the steer leg, looking curiously at him. “Just…our water flows over there, Lydia wants a garden on that side, and that way tends to be upwind of the stable.”

Also, even if they were pretty sure the rain had washed out Chris’ scent, it didn’t hurt to smear cattle blood around. Stiles watched Derek’s face, but the man didn’t seem to find anything odd in Stiles’ reasoning. He just bent down again, flipped the steer by the leg, and then walked around so that he was facing the way Stiles had pointed out.

“Thanks,” Stiles said, and Derek paused as if he genuinely had never heard those words before.

Maybe that _was_ his problem. He hesitated another second, then rolled back his shoulders and jerked the steer into moving. “I _don’t_ want to keep seeing people get killed by them,” he grunted, looking intently at Stiles. “Not Peter, not you or your wife.”

“Thanks,” Stiles said again, a little more dryly. “I’ll let Lydia know, I think she’ll be very flattered.”

“Yeah, well—yeah, fine, tell her whatever you want,” Derek said, abruptly turning around. The muscles in his back bunched and he heaved the whole carcass off the ground for a second, skipping it over a half-buried rock in the ground. Then he kept walking.

Stiles let him go and took in the meat so Lydia could get it cooking. She already had some beans boiling, and was chopping onions to go with them. She pushed those aside and chopped up a little of the meat, then put it in a bowl and pushed it to the other end of the bench, where Chris had been grinding up something in a mortar and pestle.

They’d been clearly talking—probably Chris updating Lydia on Stiles and Derek’s talk—but Chris had frozen…maybe even before Stiles opened the front door. Now he looked at the meat, then at Lydia, who made an annoyed noise, blowing at some hair that’d fallen into her face, without even looking up. She did glance over when Stiles caught the strands and tucked them behind her ear for it, but only so that she could properly aim her kick at his heel.

“At this rate I _will_ have to plant that garden,” she muttered. “I despise horticulture, you know that.”

“Well, at this rate we’ll have to start growing something, because we won’t have the cattle to ranch with,” Stiles muttered back. He went over and washed off his hands and arms, tipping the waste water out the back door, and then changed into a fresh shirt.

“They’re going to come and ask after me,” Chris finally said. He picked up the bowl, then put it down. “Derek’s right. They want me back, and they won’t just take your word that you haven’t seen anything.”

Lydia jerked her head over, as if this was only the tail-end of some ongoing argument. “Why don’t you let us deal with it?” she said. “You didn’t even know what month it was, you’re hardly in any shape to think about strategy.”

“And I don’t think Derek or Peter will be very happy to see me again,” Chris said, as if she hadn’t spoken. “I wasn’t there for their family fire, but Derek isn’t going to believe I knew nothing about it beforehand, and Peter won’t care whether or not I knew.”

“So how about you don’t let on that you’re here?” Stiles said. He came back over and took a double handful of chopped onion, and carried it over to the pot on the hearth. Gave that a stir, then went to the drying wall and started pulling down herb bunches.

Chris looked between them, then laughed incredulously and sat down on the floor. He took the bowl of meat off the bench and put it in his lap, staring at it and still snorting under his breath. Neither that nor the laugh sounded very happy. “Wouldn’t it just be a lot easier to kill me?”

“Well, did you want to die?” Lydia said. She looked at Chris till he sensed it and looked back up, and then she gestured with her chin at their herbal chest. “You know where the wolfsbane is.”

“Yeah,” Chris said. He turned the bowl around and around in his lap, looking at her, and then he abruptly jerked his head down. He flicked out a claw and set it on the rim of the bowl, shoulders drawing back tensely, and then took a deep breath. Speared a chunk of meat on his claw, looked at it, and then slowly put it into his mouth. “And no, I don’t. I probably—I _should_ , but…no.”

“All right, then. Glad we got that cleared up,” Stiles said. He sorted the bunches into the chest, dusted off his hands, and came over to see where Chris had left off with the grinding. After adding a pinch more sage, he picked up the pestle and took that over.

Lydia reached over and put a carrot in front of him. Stiles looked at it, then put the mortar and pestle aside and picked up the carrot. He started to peel it with one of their smaller knives.

“So Peter didn’t come?” Lydia said.

Stiles grinned. And then just laughed when he looked over, and saw how much she was focusing on the onions. “No, bad back, apparently. I guess even when you’re just talking, you’re a little too much.”

“And how many dinner parties have you ruined,” Lydia sniffed. “How was Derek?”

On the floor, Chris went from depressed to confused to…interested, his head rising so that he could stare at them. It was a little too intense to be just disapproving, although he was shifting uneasily on his legs.

Not that Stiles was paying that much attention to him, once it was clear he wasn’t going to join the conversation. “Still working on the concept of gratitude,” Stiles said. “I’m not sure he likes you.”

“I know he doesn’t, but that’s fine, I’m not too fond of him either,” Lydia said, finishing up with the onions. She swept the pieces up onto the flat of her knife and ferried them to the pot, then wiped the knife down and held her hand out for the now-peeled carrot. “I’ll just have to find my own friends.”

“Like Erica?” Stiles said.

Lydia stopped mid-chop, whiles Stiles had just pulled the mortar and pestle back over. They looked at each other, and then laughed and went back to work.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> JR Bourne's Canadian, and way, way before TW, was in one of the films from Canada's very own werewolf movie franchise, _Ginger Snaps_. So couldn't resist.


	6. Chapter 6

Stiles was about to put down his hand when Lydia clicked her tongue. He looked up at her, and then he went to the door, grabbing his coat along the way, while she pulled a startled but unresisting Chris towards the bedroom.

The boundary markers flashed in the dark, little bursts of white like foxfire balls, and Stiles paused, then left the door slightly ajar as he came out onto the front porch. “Hold your horses,” he called. “I’m coming, all right?”

That turned out to be more applicable than he had expected, since both Deucalion and Kali were mounted, and so were the five men they had with them. Stiles spent a few seconds wondering what charms and cantrips they must have laid on the horses to make them tolerate an alpha werewolf on their back, and then gave himself a shake, right as some asshole shone a lantern directly in his face.

He put his hand up and a small orchestra of cocking guns went around the group. Stiles put his hand back down, sighed, and just squinted against the glare. “Yeah?”

“We can’t get in,” Kali snarled. She kneed her horse like she hadn’t just said that, so the poor thing jerked up a foreleg, only to recoil as it struck an invisible barrier. “What is this? Why can’t we—”

“Magic,” Stiles said.

“Smart mouth son of a bitch,” snapped one of the men, hiking up his rifle.

Deucalion tsked and both the man and Kali fell back; Kali did so with a confused but not quite challenging look, while the man just went white and started muttering apologies. “I can’t blame you for being cautious,” Deucalion said, ignoring both of them. “Although this _is_ something of a surprise. I didn’t expect you to have such a deft hand with wards as well as herbs.”

“Well, you decide to move all the way across the country, seems like a good thing to learn,” Stiles said, shrugging. “There are a lot of dangers out in the wilderness, after all.”

“Quite,” Deucalion said. He leaned back in the saddle, hands crossed over the saddlehorn, a thoughtful smile playing about his lips. “Speaking of which, we are unfortunately here on official business. A very dangerous criminal escaped from town last night last night, and we believe that he may have headed in this direction.”

“This the same one that you were talking about?” Stiles asked.

Kali stirred again. She didn’t say anything but she did force her horse right up to the edge of the barrier, staring intently down at Stiles. Apparently Deucalion didn’t keep her up to date on all his conversations.

“You have a very good memory,” Deucalion said, nodding approvingly. “Yes, one and the same. He’s the last surviving Argent, and I’d be very surprised if you hadn’t heard of them.”

“Well, I’ll save you the surprise, in that case. Oh, you know…” Stiles stayed where he was, ignoring how Kali’s horse was wetting his front with its breath, and watched the two alphas prick alert “…shouldn’t you have a drawing or something? With a big ‘Wanted’ across the top? Or is that one of those things they tell us back East that isn’t actually true?”

The man who’d called him a smart mouth bridled up, then spit a stream of tobacco juice towards Stiles. That did get over the barrier—Kali’s eyes flicked after it, registering the implications—but Stiles easily side-stepped it, and then it made Kali’s horse stamp sideways, which just earned the man a full-fanged snarl from her.

“We didn’t have the time for a poster,” Kali said, reining her horse back in. She still had her fangs out as she looked down at Stiles. “Anyway, he wasn’t in much shape to pose for it. But you don’t need one to pick him out. He’s a werewolf now.”

“Okay, well, I guess I’ll just let you know any time I spot one around here,” Stiles said.

“You should do that anyway,” Deucalion said curtly. He turned his horse’s head as if to walk it away, cutting across Kali and going right up against the barrier, and then stopped so that Stiles was facing his knee. He looked straight ahead; he strapped his cane to the saddle like other people did rifles, Stiles noted. “Any werewolf within twenty miles of town isn’t supposed to be there. But just let us know, and we’ll deal with it. You needn’t trouble yourself more than that.”

“Good to know,” Stiles said, and then blinked as Kali leveled a suspicious look at him. “No, really. I mean, I barely even know how to ranch, you know, so rogue werewolves? What would I do with that?”

“Oh, I don’t know. You’ve proven yourself rather more than expected so far. You and your delightful wife.” Deucalion put one hand on the cane head, twisting it in its ties so that it clipped the barrier, making a hard crack that sent more than one hunter starting backwards. Then he walked his horse in a slow U-turn so the cane tip dragged slowly across empty air and then off. The corner of his mouth quirked at the unnerving swish that accompanied that. “I do hope that the two of you continue to show such…uncommon sensibilities.”

Kali laughed, her mouth opening inhumanly wide to accommodate her fangs. “You’ve made some headway on that ranching,” she said, tossing her head towards the pen of lowing cattle. “Be a real shame if your time here got cut short before you worked out all the kinks, but it’s not an easy life. And like you said, there are a lot of dangerous things in the area. Anything could happen.”

“Good night, Mr. Stilinski,” Deucalion said, riding away, one hand raising in a precious farewell. “Give my best to your wife.”

“Aiden’s best too,” Kali snorted, following.

The rest of the group fell in behind her. For all their posturing, the men kept tight behind the alphas, jostling so close that they were practically kicking each other’s horses. They kept looking nervously around, and more than once Kali had to turn and snap at them to not waste the bullets, as one took aim at something in the woods

Stiles stayed by the boundary, watching them. All of the hunters turned back and saw him at one point or the other, and one even bothered to lean over and point it out to Kali, who brushed him off without even looking back. The man jerked away from her, touching his arm like he’d gotten cut, and then he glowered at Stiles as if Stiles had the claws. Stiles smiled and waved at him, and he angrily spit a wad of tobacco that just dirtied up his poor horse’s flanks.

Once they were out of sight, Stiles checked the boundary markers on either side of the spot, then went back into the house. He paused at the threshold and coughed, and when he shut the door, Lydia was standing in the bedroom doorway, still holding a shirt and a threaded needle in her hands.

“We’re looking for him, let us know if you see any werewolf because we’re the big deal around here, oh and we know you’re not what you seem and we have our eye on you, so on and so on,” Stiles said, taking off his coat. “Still not ready to go after us.”

He scratched at the side of his neck, and then was about to go into the bedroom when something red caught his eye. Stiles looked up at Lydia, who attempted to smile it off with a face as rigid as a wooden mask, and then he reached down and lifted the sleeve. It was just a little blot of blood, probably from pricking herself with her needle.

“Now?” she said, low but sharp.

He looked at her again, then sighed and just waved his hand, going into the bedroom. They’d have to talk about it later—and now they’d have to find somewhere out of earshot of a werewolf, which was probably why she was so reluctant—but he’d about had his fill of tricky things for the day.

Chris was sitting on one corner of the bed, boxed in by Lydia’s open sewing box and the neat ranks of pins, bobbins, and fabric scraps she had arranged around it. He’d chosen to deal with the lack of space by making himself even narrower, pulling up one leg so he could lock his arms around it and keep it firmly wedged under his chin. They’d given him a pair of Stiles’ trousers, and those were hanging so loosely on his hips that the ends lapped over his feet.

He watched Stiles get ready for bed in silence. Even his breathing was so shallow that Stiles had to check for the slight flutter of his shirt to know it was there. And then Stiles put his hand down on the bed, and Chris jerked.

Well, if the man wanted to sleep on the floor or on some chests, which were the other options, Stiles wasn’t going to stop him. Stiles pushed aside the sheets and crawled into the middle, where the hypocaust underneath made it the warmest, then planted his face into the bedding. And just soaked up some of that heat, letting it soften his tense muscles. 

After a moment, he turned his head. Saw he’d disturbed some of Lydia’s things, and wormed his arm out to reorder them away from him. She was still moving around in the other room, banking the fire from the sound of things.

“They’re going to come back,” Chris said. He breathed in a half-hiss as Stiles looked at him, his hand shifting up and down his shin. “You can’t just…you can’t think that you can just hide me forever.”

“Yeah, I know, cabin fever and all that. I don’t think werewolves do too well in small spaces for long…what, I say something funny?” Stiles said.

Chris’ face had spasmed, and the noise that had come from him was strange enough to make Stiles look closer. It wasn’t amused at all, but it had the ring of a laugh, that wheeze. Though the bulk of it was closer to a strangle, or maybe a sob, if the sob was pushed through a handful of gravel. And now he was shaking his head, shaking it and pressing a trembling hand to the side of his face.

“No. No, it’s not—it never was a joke. It wasn’t even when we—God, we didn’t…shit.” Chris was starting to shake so much that he was sliding off the bed.

Stiles got up and reached over; Chris saw him, but only when he nearly had his fingers around the man’s arm and it was too late. Chris’ jerk just made it easier for Stiles to grab him, and then, when he threw up his arm in a wild escape attempt, to yank him over onto the bed. Pins went sliding over the sheets, Lydia’s box clattered and then the lid fell shut, and Chris started up, only to freeze as Stiles seized him by the back of his neck.

Then he went limp, so fast that that sent him closer to falling on the floor than his initial panic had. His legs were still over the edge of the bed; Stiles hauled on the man’s neck, then hooked his other hand under Chris’ arm and just dragged him up. He wondered for a moment if Chris had passed out, but no—if anything, the man was _too_ awake, his eyes wide and glassy, like somebody slapped out of a nightmare.

Also, he was still limp. Stiles admittedly hadn’t had a lot of contact with werewolves—well, not a lot of repeated contact, and definitely not when he was trying to not be hostile—but it seemed like an extreme reaction, even for an omega. Werewolves were vicious, they led violent lives, they took things in stride that Stiles still blanched at. And Chris had been a hunter, and one who’d lived to raise a family. Hunters who survived that long generally weren’t shrinking violets either.

But the way he was acting now…Stiles let go and Chris didn’t move. He pulled himself up into a sitting position so he could move away and Chris shifted, but just to lie on his belly, pull his feet onto the bed. His breathing was starting to slow, but he didn’t look like he was going to get up or talk any time soon.

A floorboard creaked. Stiles looked up, trying not to react as Chris stiffened up again, a muffled, thin whine coming from him, and Lydia came into the room with two steaming cups. She handed one to him, then kept the other for herself as she climbed back onto the bed. She settled herself on Chris’ other side, dropping the half-mended shirt and then leaning over to root through the sheets for her scattered pins and bobbins. When her hand came near Chris, he twitched away but Lydia ignored that and just picked out her things. Once she flicked a fold of the sheet up onto him, rooted out a pin, and then pulled the fold off in the same motion.

In a couple seconds, Lydia had everything ordered the way she wanted it again, so she pulled the shirt over her lap and then set the cup down on her sewing box. She’d moved, and was still moving, as if she had nothing more than a restless cat next to her, instead of an increasingly baffled-looking werewolf, and Stiles had to hide his grin in his cup of…coffee.

“This tastes good,” he said, pulling it away and peering into it. “I didn’t make this.”

“He did,” Lydia said, nodding at Chris.

Stiles tilted his head, waiting for Chris to warily turn to look at him, and then nodded. “Huh. What’d you do?”

He wasn’t actually expected a response, but Chris gave him one, albeit in a scratchy whisper. “Roasted the beans a little more over the fire.”

“Did not try that,” Stiles said after a moment. “And I think we tried just about everything else.”

“Well, it’s not like either of us ever _had_ to bother with that before,” Lydia muttered. She was still a little wound up about something, he could tell by how she was yanking at her needle. “We had servants, and you—”

“Didn’t, but that was back East, and we’re not there now,” Stiles said sharply.

Lydia looked up, then grimaced. She dropped her eyes back to her stitches, but her head tipped in a silent apology, which he didn’t need.

“I’m sorry about that…about just now,” Chris said. He shifted back a few inches, folding his legs up and twisting so that he could lay them on their sides, but stay on his belly where he could see both of them without having to swivel his head. “If you have to keep me indoors, I’m not—I’m not going to argue. It makes sense.”

“I didn’t think we were arguing,” Stiles said, frowning. “Why would you?”

Chris’ shoulders pushed up sharply, so that his shirt strained over the sharp triangles of his shoulderblades. But instead of getting up, he just burrowed more into the bed. The sheets on either side of him were rippling slightly and Stiles thought the man might be kneading his hands under there, like a nervous cat.

“That pack that had—where I killed one of them before,” he said after a long silence. “What happened—my family’s hunting code, we try and take werewolves alive. And then—then we hold them. We don’t just kill them right away. It’s…anyway, what I did, I did that, but the werewolf tried to escape and we killed him. So that’s what they did to me and V—my family. Turned us one by one, held us till we couldn’t take it and then killed us when we broke out.”

“I take it that you were last,” Lydia said. She seemed to be working out of whatever had been bothering her, stitching the shirt to mend it and not to torture it in place of something else.

Chris closed his eyes for a second. “Yeah, I was. And I…well, I wasn’t bothering with escape. Didn’t see the point. They’d stopped feeding me, it was just a matter of—well, it would’ve been if the Alphas hadn’t found them.”

“You’re eating now. You said you didn’t want to die,” Stiles said. He drank some more of the really very good coffee, then wiped his mouth on the back of his hand. “Changed your mind?”

“I…wasn’t pack. With them.” For a second Chris’ face twisted and his voice closed up, and he looked like he might have another fit. 

Stiles straightened up, and beyond Chris he could see Lydia reaching out to cage in her cup with her free hand, while tying off her thread with her teeth and her needle hand. But Chris just sighed, pulling up one arm to rub at one eye.

“I wasn’t, but their alpha bit me and I was around them all the time—they didn’t just lock us up, they would come and talk—taunt us, yell at us, cry, everything. And I wasn’t pack but watching the Alphas kill them all off, it—” a little heat entered Chris’ voice for the first time, and it was just a trace but it was surprisingly intense “—I didn’t get it, all right? My family studied werewolves for generations, but I didn’t—I do now. I felt something. They killed my wife and daughter but when the Alphas killed them, all I could do was watch, _again_ , and…and maybe I deserved to die at their hands, for what I did, but I don’t think the Alphas deserve to kill me.”

“According to them, you’ve also killed pack members of theirs,” Lydia said.

“Well, so have they,” Chris said, sharply enough for her to look up. He shifted himself lower, clearly uneasy with his anger, but he wasn’t flinching from her. He actually held her gaze till, shrugging, Lydia looked away. “It’s a little ridiculous for them to claim vengeance now. And none of them mean it. It’s not their damned pack they want to revenge, it’s themselves, but even other werewolves hate them.”

Lydia tipped her head dismissively to the side as she shook out the shirt. She held it up and checked the mended seam, then folded it up. One sleeve was damp where she’d tried to wash out the blood, damp and still with a small pink dot, and she kept that sleeve on top as she set the shirt aside. “Frankly, Chris, Stiles and I do our best to avoid making those sorts of judgments.”

Chris looked a little irritated with her, but he just moved his arms against the bed, working it out with his kneading. Then he slid over, pulling his legs off a scrap she wanted, and bumped up against Stiles. His head whipped around and he and Stiles looked at each other, while Stiles sipped coffee and he breathed hard.

“I’m not interested in letting the Alphas kill me,” Chris said, in about the firmest tone he’d used to date. “Can we leave it at that?”

“Sure,” Stiles said. “It’s not like we knew any of these people.”

“You say that, but you don’t know me either. Or Derek or Peter, whatever they’ve told you,” Chris said after a moment, puzzled and wary about it. “And if you’re that worried that Deucalion will get hold of somebody who knows more about demons than he does…”

“Yeah, but we’re not as big as you all on just killing everybody. Can we just leave it at that?” Stiles said. When Chris nodded, slow and still cautious, Stiles grinned and drank off the rest of his coffee. He moved over to put his cup down on the floor, far enough away so he wouldn’t accidentally step on it, and then he started working himself under the blankets on that side of the bed. “So the whole hiding you thing. Definitely not a permanent thing. We know we’ll have to deal with the Alphas eventually.”

Lydia hummed in agreement. She wasn’t quite as absorbed in her quilting as she was making out, but she didn’t raise her head as Stiles put his down, and Chris went silent again. 

Stiles started out on his back, but he had a hot spot right between his shoulderblades—if they ever got time, he was going to crawl into the mattress platform and check the insulation, because there were spots where you could almost fry an egg—and he rolled over. He stayed there for a few minutes, then moved again, and that was when he noticed that Chris was slowly migrating with him. Pulling himself out of the wide space Stiles had left him and tucking into the new, very narrow channel between Stiles and Lydia.

“Hey,” Stiles said, pushing up on his arm.

Chris froze, then dropped his head. He was biting his lip and generally looking as if he’d known it was a terrible idea, and hated himself for following up on it anyway. But not like he wasn’t doing it on purpose.

Stiles looked at Lydia, who raised a brow and then flicked her fingers at him, telling him to do what he liked. Then he shrugged and he pulled up the blankets, making a little cave in front of Chris, who was in mid-retreat.

“Lydia hates it when you make her redo a crooked seam,” Stiles said. “Just get in already.”

Chris jerked sharply back, his eyes widening. He…didn’t actually look that surprised, so much as…as offended? No, not that, and not like he was misunderstanding anything either. If anything, he looked like they were all on the same page, and like he was mad at Stiles and Lydia for being so sharp.

“Are you two really married?” he suddenly asked.

Stiles looked at Lydia again. “Well, I do call him my husband,” she said, amused and getting more interested than just that. She finished off her current stitch, then started pinning up everything. “And by common law—”

“By a couple codes besides that, I’m pretty sure we qualify now,” Stiles said. “Why? You got morals about this?”

“My wife’s dead,” Chris said, a surge of anger in his voice. Then he pressed his lips together. He tipped his head down, glaring at the blankets, and then abruptly rolled over. Twisted himself around, and slithered under the sheet Stiles was holding up. “And I’m a damn werewolf, and—”

“One person ordering you around is as good as another?” Lydia said. She packed up her half-worked quilt and got off the bed to stow it and the sewing box against the wall. Then she came back over, loosening her shift and letting her hair down as she slipped under the sheets.

Chris snorted. He still sounded angry, and he was tense where he was brushing up against Stiles, but he _was_ brushing up. And then leaning into it, even rubbing his cheek into Stiles’ chest to get comfortable, as Lydia curled up on his other side.

She caught Stiles’ eye, a glint in hers, and then put her hand on the side of his neck, just as Stiles slid his up to wrap over Chris’ shoulders. They stopped there, letting Chris hiss and twist like he was going to force his way out and…and then he settled. Still a little stiff, and he snarled a little when Stiles moved his hands any lower, so Stiles put them back on his shoulders.

A few moments passed. They just laid there, and Stiles could hear Lydia’s breathing starting to slow. He was nodding off himself, though he woke up when his forehead touched the back of Chris’ skull—completely unintentional—and Chris hissed again.

“What the hell are you two doing here?” Chris suddenly said. “People like you, you don’t need to be somewhere like Beacon Hills, wading into somebody else’s mess.”

“Well, we have property here now. So blame my dead great-uncle, because hell if I know why he liked this place either,” Stiles said. He let his hands ride Chris’ small twitch, and then slid down so that he could lean his mouth against Lydia’s fingertips where they were lying over Chris’ neck. 

She pressed back on his lips, then moved her arm further around so that she was as much curling the backs of her fingers against his chin as she was cupping Chris’ neck. “We’re not going to do whatever you’re thinking,” she murmured, while Chris breathed in unevenly. “But we’ve enough to do without also having to act as if we’re all still back East, where it’s a terrible scandal for a man to look me in the eyes when he’s picking up my hat for me.”

“Just relax and go to sleep,” Stiles added. He rubbed his thumbs over the points of Chris’ shoulders, then chuckled as Chris stopped breathing completely for a second. “If you need to pile in to do that, it’s better than keeping us up watching you fidget. That’s how we’re looking at it, anyway.”

Chris didn’t disagree. He didn’t agree either. Didn’t say a thing. Didn’t get up. And then he made a very low, very tired, aching noise, and settled down.


	7. Chapter 7

They didn’t trust Chris, exactly, but Stiles and Lydia did believe that the man would stay inside the house, and not try anything a few extra wards couldn’t block. So when a few days passed and the only sign of hunting posses they had was the occasional twinge of an outlying alarm rune, they left him alone and went out to take another steer to the Nemeton.

“So you want to tell me what you saw?” Stiles said, once they were far enough away.

“No,” Lydia said.

They walked a few more yards. Stiles was carrying most of their gear, but Lydia had a pair of waterskins tied over her shoulder. One of them was for Peter—it wouldn’t be as strong, since they couldn’t get more alcohol without another trip into town—but they were nearly to the tree and they hadn’t seen any sign of him or Derek. Stiles was beginning to regret not setting a tracking rune on Derek the last time he’d seen the man.

“I didn’t see, I heard,” Lydia abruptly said. “Well. Maybe. I don’t…it wasn’t a trance, Stiles. I was awake, I know I was, but I thought I heard…I thought I heard his voice.”

Stiles slowed. It was a bright, sunny day, a nice change of pace from the rain, but he pulled his coat collar up against a sudden chill. “What were you doing?”

“Telling Chris to not be an idiot,” Lydia said tartly. She swished her skirts out of the way as the steer blundered towards them. “For a hunter with his pedigree and experience, he’s horribly prone to worrying about others.”

“You didn’t let him touch any of my knives, did you?” Stiles said.

Lydia snorted, but her contempt was already fading into something just as brittle, but far more anxious. She twitched at her skirts again, then glanced sharply around the woods. Even stopped for a moment, before shaking her head and catching up to Stiles and the steer.

“I was talking to him, and then I thought I heard…from the other room.” She grimaced. “He noticed. He hasn’t asked about it, but he noticed. He would be quick about that.”

“Well, like you said, his background,” Stiles said. He pulled the steer on when it tried to root at something in the ground. “What’d you hear?”

“‘He’s right, be careful,’” Lydia muttered. She immediately sniffed to show how credible she found it, but she was still looking around. “Which would be something he’d say.”

They went on in silence, and in another couple minutes the Nemeton came into view. Nothing around it looked out of place, although Stiles noted that it was much quieter. When they’d first come, the tree had looked intimidating, but birds and squirrels and things like that had been coming and going just fine around it. Now, he could still hear birdsong, but it was definitely coming from nearby trees, and not right where the Nemeton was.

“Let’s not cut off its head this time,” Stiles said. “I think that’s too much too fast. Let’s try just cutting its throat, and then letting it bleed out. We’re trying to make people nervous, not scare them into just coming after us.”

Lydia looked at him a little skeptically—rightly so; if they were going to do that, they should have just turned around and come a day later—but she didn’t object. Then she stepped out ahead, to go and check more closely that the tree was clear, and she stumbled. Her foot knocked into something that rang hollow.

Stiles immediately pulled the steer aside, making room as Lydia leaped back. She bunched up her skirts in her hand and swung around so that she and Stiles were on the same side.

“Damn him, it’s as if our lives _don’t_ depend on utter secrecy,” Peter said from behind them.

He had a harried look, his hair mussed and his coat rucked up under the bag he had slung over one shoulder. And he was limping heavily, though he did his best to walk over to them as if he’d always intended to arrive just then.

“You live under it,” Stiles said, as Peter gave them a polite nod and then continued on, ignoring the snorting steer, to kneel down and uncover a trapdoor. “You actually live in the Nemeton’s roots. I don’t know whether that’s brilliant or insane.”

“A fairly even mix of both, I’d say, and I have a few years of experience to speak from,” Peter said dryly. He pulled up the trapdoor, tossed his bag down into it, then pivoted on his feet to face them. “Well. Our little secret’s out. There goes the neighborhood, I suppose.”

He was still calm, but it was just a thin veneer. Under it Peter was angry and nervous, which was to be expected. What _was_ unusual was the way he almost seemed to be daring them to try using it against him, a step past even Derek’s pessimism.

Lydia caught it too, glancing questioningly at Stiles. He debated it for a second, then raised the steer’s lead rope and gave it a tug. Her eyes narrowed, and then she smiled indulgently and took the pack off his shoulder so he could lead the steer up to the tree.

“Well, since you’re here, you can hold onto these,” she said, dropping her waterskins and the pack by Peter.

Who tightened his lips and looked on, tense but otherwise emotionless, as Lydia took out the hammer and the knives, then went after Stiles. He was still like that as they killed the steer, though Stiles thought he saw Peter shift up for a better view as, instead of cutting off the head, they simply slashed the throat this time.

“Did you want the same as the last time?” Lydia called over to him. Then she looked up. She frowned and moved so that her knee bumped into Stiles.

He looked up and Peter was gone, but the trapdoor was still open. Before Stiles could say anything, Peter emerged from it with…with a tray. And what appeared to be an honest to God tea service set on it, which he proceeded to carry over and set down just short of the bloodstained ground. He poured out three cups, picked up one for himself and settled in place.

“Since we’re going to be civilized about this,” he said, with a faint twist of pleasure in his amusement. “Yes, that will do nicely. Why’d you cut its throat?”

“It’s getting a little too active,” Stiles said after a second’s thought. The flow of blood had almost stopped, but he reached into the slit gut and gave the heart a couple squeezes, just to make sure. “We don’t want people to start thinking this is a place to be cleansed, just one to avoid.”

“Judging from the comments Derek and I have heard, you’ve been successful so far,” Peter said. He popped out the claws of his free hand, then scraped out a little blood from under them.

Lydia pulled out of the gut cavity, then went over to Peter, who’d brought their waterskins. She was bending over for one when he helpfully picked it up, uncapped it and then tilted it so she could wash off her hands and forearms. “The hunters? That where you were coming from, just now?” she asked

“A few of them, here and there, as the opportunity presents itself. Nothing that couldn’t be explained by bad luck and the other wildlife around here, since like you, we do want to keep a low profile.” Peter retreated with the skin once she was done, but kept hold of it. He turned to Stiles with an inviting smile, and then made that a charming reprimand when Stiles shook his head. “No need to dress the whole thing for us. Derek will be back shortly—we can’t go far from here these days, what with the hunters—and if he’s forgotten his lessons about _hiding_ , I’m sure he could use practice on his other skills too.”

Stiles was doing a little more than just gutting the carcass, but he wrapped that up and pulled out his arms as if reconsidering Peter’s offer. Peter certainly took it that way, so pleased he was nearly humming with it as he poured out the water for Stiles. “So what’ve you heard?” Stiles asked. “Visions, voices, bad dreams…”

“Oh, all of that. The dreams seem to be the most common,” Peter said. Oddly enough, his satisfaction faded as he spoke. “Though I had the fortune to come across a pair who’d shot each other, and one was still alive to let me know that it was because he’d thought the other had caught a woman and wasn’t sharing her.”

He slipped Lydia a considering look, but she met it with her own, so Stiles had to duck away to avoid grinning in Peter’s face. “Have you seen anything?” Lydia asked sweetly. “We’re worried that the tree’s going beyond the targets we set for it, that’s another reason why.”

Peter’s smile turned stiff. He put the waterskin down, and he was going to do something with his teacup when she pushed the other skin towards him.

“That one’s yours,” Stiles said. When Peter looked at him, Stiles shrugged and picked up one of the two other cups. They had very similar patterns, blue on white, but up close he could tell they were mismatched. Still, very nice, and the stuff in them was actual tea, albeit tasting well past its best. “Derek said you’d done something to your back, showing us the cemetery.”

“We had to redo the recipe since we’re short a few ingredients, so double the dose for the same effect.” Brisk now, Lydia got up and cleaned off their knives with some water and a rag, then packed them away. She glanced at the cup in Stiles’ hand, but put that off in favor of scrubbing at his face; he’d apparently missed a few splashes.

And they weren’t coming off easily. Stiles winced at how hard she was rubbing, but Lydia just moved her grip from his shoulder to his cheek. She made an annoyed sound as he sipped tea around her hand, then curled up over him, working at some blood that had gotten into his hair near his temple. Stiles bent under her and Lydia flicked his ear, then pushed herself around and onto his back, dropping one arm down onto his chest to lock herself in place.

“Lovely,” Peter said. It sounded half to himself, but when they looked up, he was openly staring at them. And smiling very appreciatively, although there was a hard edge to it. And when Lydia let herself slide down Stiles’ back, dropping her other arm to clasp her hands just over Stiles’ collarbone, Peter’s chuckle was as resentful as it was knowing. “But I do have to ask what I’ve done to earn this.”

“What, the medicine?” Stiles said. “You got hurt helping us.”

Peter’s brows rose. “Oh, did Deucalion appreciate the choice of meeting place?”

“I don’t know if ‘appreciate’ is the proper word, but he doesn’t treat us like greenhorns anymore,” Lydia said. “When he came calling later at the house, he brought Kali and five hunters with him.

“So he did check with you,” Peter said, voice abruptly flat. He put his cup down harder than he’d meant, his nails lengthening slightly at the clatter, and then he slipped his hand under the tray to steady it. “That’s to be expected, I suppose. You know who they’re looking for?”

“One of the Argents,” Lydia said, frowning. Then she reached towards the untouched cup, just as Peter lifted away the tray. “It’s very unkind to not offer to both of us.”

“And I was under the impression that the offer was the other way around,” Peter said. The amusement was back, although it was liberally shot through with bitterness. “Well, I am sorry, but we have so few belongings left from our old house, and I don’t think this is a discussion that should be held near such frail things.”

Stiles reached up and Peter sighed, but stopped. “I was just going to give you back mine,” Stiles said, holding up the half-drunk cup.

Peter stared at it for a second, lips pressed together, a slight tic in the scars coming out of his shirt-collar. Then he made a rueful noise, suddenly relaxed and pleasant again. He took the cup from Stiles and stood up, but instead of simply leaving, he was clearly waiting for them to follow. “I would be happy to offer you a different cup,” he said to Lydia. “It’ll just be a moment.”

“Oh, why don’t we all go?” she said. Then she leaned her head against Stiles’, her fingers sliding into Stiles’ shirt-collar, pushing it from his throat as Peter’s eyes narrowed. “Since we know now.”

“I’ve never seen a Nemeton root cellar before,” Stiles added.

“You _are_ something, aren’t you?” Peter said, studying both of them. He shifted back on his feet, signaling caution even as a reckless glint came into his eye. “Derek was right for once.”

Which seemed to settle it for him. He shifted the tray in his hand, then reached out with his other to help Stiles up. Lydia came up with Stiles, still clinging to his back, and her skirts flicked across Peter’s shoes before he stepped back.

“Well, come into my humble home,” Peter said, stepping back towards the trapdoor.

* * *

It was a nice space, for all that it was underground. The ceiling was low, only a couple inches above Stiles’ head, but everything had been plastered—it had less dirt than the ranch house—and the support posts and beams looked solid. A slight draft, and the lack of soot despite a number of lanterns hanging about, told Stiles that whoever had built it had thought about ventilation.

“This is an old family bolthole,” Peter said, lighting a few of the lanterns. “Possibly the first place we lived.”

“How long has your family been here?” Lydia said, frowning. 

California hadn’t been terribly popular till about forty years ago, and even now, this part was very sparsely populated outside of the major roads. Werewolves did tend to be in the forefront of settlers, and also tended to die young, but that still couldn’t have been many generations.

Peter was following along their thoughts, because he nodded to something on the wall: a battered flintlock rifle with heavy scorching on the butt. “I can’t tell you exactly, since record-keeping was rather scanty, I’m sure you can understand. But well before the gold rush,” he said. He closed the current lantern and then backtracked to climb up and shut the trapdoor. “We had more than a few ancestors in the fur trade.”

“Still are in it, looks like,” Stiles said. He set down their pack and then waved his hand at a stack of hides in the corner.

“Supplemental income, when we’re lucky,” Peter said, coming back down. “The Alphas scare off or take most of the valuable game. And when we do get something, it’s too risky for the few contacts we still have in town. The closest outpost that will take anything is a good thirty miles from here.”

He took the tea service from the crate where he’d set it down and walked it over to a set of barrels pushed up against the wall. One had water, while the others seemed to serve as a kitchen counter, since there was a small stack of dishes on one and a set of knives hanging on the wall above them. Peter poured out the cup of tea into a metal cup, turned and set that on a crate, and then began washing off the other dishes into a waste bucket.

Aside from tall piles of crates against every wall, there wasn’t a lot. No furniture or even personal items; surprising, considering how long Peter and Derek must have been using the place. One chair, clearly scavenged from a fire, sat to the side, while there was a single mattress nested into a box that’d been pieced together out of smaller crates. The box only raised the mattress a few inches off the ground, but Lydia opted for it over the chair, taking her tea with her, and after a moment, Stiles joined her.

Once he’d rinsed the dishes, Peter dried his hands off and then came to squat across from them, despite the plentiful crates he could’ve used for a seat. He had the skin with the medicine with him, and he uncapped it and poured a little into his palm, then sniffed at it. Touched his tongue-tip to the little pool, paused, and then recapped the skin, pushing it aside.

“What are you doing about the Alphas?” Peter asked.

“Besides the—” Stiles started.

“Yes, yes, besides all the little tricks and subterfuge and all your other stalling tactics,” Peter said impatiently. “Don’t treat me like a fool. I’ve been enjoying things so far, I’ll admit, but Argent’s managed to evade them longer than I would’ve thought, and it’s making them very angry. And if you thought that _that_ would be a distraction, then I’ve sorely misjudged you.”

Stiles raised his brows. “What, did you think we planned for them to catch him and then lose him? We didn’t even know the Argents had anybody out here till Deucalion made a big deal out of it.”

“Well, with you two I don’t think I should assume anything,” Peter said tightly. The muscles in the side of his neck twitched again and he put his hand up, roughly digging into them with its heel. “All right, you didn’t know about him, but that doesn’t matter. What matters is that they’re constantly out in the woods, looking for him, and they’ll keep going out till they find at least a body.”

“If I were him, I would have run as far from here as I could,” Lydia said. “It’s been a few days. He could have gotten to the next town by now.”

Peter snorted and shook his head, then rubbed hard at his neck. “Not Chris. I don’t have any sympathy for him, but I do—call it resonance. His and my family, we’ve neither of us been able to leave this town. He tried and failed, and I don’t think he’ll try again. I think he’s still here.”

“You know him?” Stiles said, carefully not looking at Lydia. 

“Yes. Well, I knew him. It’s been quite a few years. But men like us, we don’t change that much,” Peter said, as dry and dark as burnt coffee. He started to lower his hand, only to wince and grab at his shoulder. “Anyway, I asked you—”

He stopped. So Stiles stopped, his hand halfway out. Peter looked at it, and then at him, with an expression that bordered on murderous. It was hot as any revival preacher’s hell, and promised just as much violence.

Stiles reached the rest of the way, just touching the scars on Peter’s neck. A hand immediately snapped around his wrist. And Peter stopped there, his anger cooling just as it seemed about to reach flashpoint. He held onto Stiles’ wrist and stared at the tea cup Lydia was holding just under his mouth. While he’d been glowering at Stiles, she’d pulled over the skin and used it to fill the cup.

“I don’t,” Peter started, very precise about how his resentment shaded his humor, and Stiles curled his hand around the side of Peter’s throat. Peter’s eyes flashed as if lightning had lit them up from within, then faded to show real confusion. “I don’t. Think you know what you’re doing.”

“Don’t we?” Lydia said. She put the cup down and tipped off the bed, onto her knees. Put her hand on Peter’s arm, the one holding Stiles’ wrist. She tugged at it, not to free Stiles but to undo the cuff, and then she pushed Peter’s sleeve up his arm, letting her fingers trace along the scars.

And Stiles, well, he knew he had his hand too far back to be polite, as far as werewolves went. He pushed it further around, till his fingertips were just pressed alongside Peter’s spine. Peter’s pupils dilated and Stiles dropped his thumb, sliding it over the thick ridge of one scar that wound down over Peter’s collarbone. “I’m pretty sure,” he said.

Peter didn’t smile so much as bare his teeth. “You don’t know what kind of _offer_ you’re making,” he said, with a tone that could have slit steel. “Or what you might be getting.”

“That’s so strange,” Lydia said, rising on her knees, so she just started to press in between Peter’s legs. She’d bared Peter’s arm nearly to the elbow and now she pulled her hand from there, then put it up so that she was tipping his chin with her fingertips, just as his eyes flicked down. She looked at him, and Stiles did the same over her shoulder. “I could’ve sworn that you didn’t _want_ us to know that.”

The muscles in Peter’s neck bunched under Stiles’ hand. He rubbed his fingertips and thumb into their flexing; Peter pulled his lips a little further back from his teeth, nostrils flared, eyes glowing. But it was Stiles that pulled him into Lydia. Peter didn’t need much, just that tap against his nape, but he didn’t go till Stiles did that.

Lydia’s hands wrapped around Peter’s face as he crushed her against the side of the bed, his hands dropping to either side of her to grip at the mattress box edge. He rose briefly over her, their mouths pressed so tightly together that the flesh around them was whitened, and then she and Stiles pulled him back over and onto the bed.

She crawled after him, one hand dragging up his shirt as the other efficiently undid the front of her dress, letting her breasts slip out of the top of the shift she wore underneath. Stiles rolled in beside her, pinning down Peter’s arm as he reached for them. Then he ducked under Lydia and laid his free hand flat over Peter’s stomach. He followed in the wake of Lydia’s hand as she stripped up Peter’s shirt, then leaned over to have his turn with Peter’s mouth while she pulled that off Peter’s arms.

Peter kissed him just as hard, if not harder, even when Stiles got his hands to either side of the man’s throat and started dragging thumbs along the tendons there. No teeth, that much Peter held back, but he bruised out plenty of heat just with his lips and tongue. His leg twisted under Stiles, and then his head dropped out of his shirt and into the cradle of Stiles’ hands.

Lydia tossed the shirt aside, then moved back so Peter was staring at both of them, panting and still angry. A little stiff with expectation, the bitter kind, as they looked him over. His scars webbed over one side from halfway up his neck down into his trousers. And when he was holding his head like that, throat arched as much in challenge as in offer, the strain of his skin over his face revealed a faint webbing that said the scars had gone much higher, once.

“You’re always so slow,” Lydia said, pushing at Stiles’ shoulder. 

When he looked at her, she pulled his shirt-collar till the first few buttons came out, then left it to gape as she turned back to Peter. Her shoulders were slipping out of her dress, and she shrugged them farther out, leaning over to run her finger along a particularly broad scar on Peter’s chest. Peter breathed in sharply, making that finger detour along a rib, and then started to lift his head.

Lydia’s hand snapped out, catching his neck in the vee of her thumb and forefinger. She pushed him back down, then bent over to kiss him as Peter let out a startled, disbelieving, not at all objecting noise. Some of her hair came out of her bun and tumbled down her shoulder, hiding their faces behind it.

Stiles reached over and pulled the rest of her hair out, kissing along her back till Lydia shouldered him off. Then she grabbed his arm, and pulled him onto Peter as she rolled off, aiming for the end of the bed near some bottles.

She’d gotten Peter’s trousers loose but not off. Stiles slid his hands into them, feeling down till the scars finally disappeared, about a third of the way down Peter’s thigh. While licking his way up the other end of them, working his tongue around and in between scars on Peter’s neck as Peter alternated between yanking his shoulders and kneading at the bed, gasping and roughly moaning. He kept Peter’s head up, knocking at the man’s chin with his own head whenever it started to fall forward.

Peter didn’t fight so much on that as Stiles was expecting. Seemed to even want that, after a couple half-hearted attempts to push Stiles over, his hips rocking up, and then spreading his knees once Stiles got their trousers off. And every time one of them even breathed on his scars, he shuddered all over like they’d stuck a knife in his gut.

Lydia was back again, with some kind of oil that ran off her fingers and onto Stiles’ hands as they both groped between Peter’s legs. Finally Stiles pushed up to straddle Peter’s waist, and the look on Peter’s face when he realized both of Stiles’ hands were on his chest—Stiles laughed, then slid his fingers back into the hair on top of Peter’s head. He listened for Lydia’s little tongue-click, then jerked Peter back by that grip, just as Peter arched his back clear off the bed, groaning.

“So what are we getting, Peter?” Lydia said, shaking the hair out of her face. She was breathless but plain alive with it, roses in her cheeks, a flash in her eyes that made Stiles jerk against Peter, pressing his cock into the man’s thigh, when he caught it.

“Yeah, what is it?” Stiles said. He raked his fingers through Peter’s hair a few times, tugging so Peter’s chin dragged up with each stroke, and then moved his hand to grip the back of Peter’s neck as he and Lydia rolled the man onto his side. He grabbed one leg, Lydia pushed at the other, and together they got Peter, wild-eyed, mouthing eagerly at Stiles’ jaw, hiked up so that Stiles could slide his cock along the man’s ass. “What? Your fight with the Alphas?”

“Your grumpy nephew?” Lydia pulled her hand back when Stiles bumped his cock into it, then reached around and grabbed it at the midpoint, guiding it into Peter. And then she kept her forefinger and thumb circled there, pushed up against the rim of Peter’s hole so Stiles was fucking the man through it. “How terrifying, I’m so worried about him.”

Peter laughed, but he was shaking his head. “He’s still—Derek’s family, he’s what I—”

“Oh, we weren’t going to leave him out, even if he’s not so happy about it,” Stiles said. He dragged his hand up Peter’s thigh, scratching at some of the scars—Peter bucked roughly, moan breaking—and then planted both hands on the man’s hips, while Lydia wrapped her arm around Peter from behind, mouthing his neck scars from behind. “But what else? All the other people you’ve gotten mad at you over the years?”

“All the _ghosts_ ,” Lydia said. She laughed lowly when Peter twisted between them. Her hand dragged down between Peter and Stiles, then pulled Peter’s cock away from where it was slapping into Stiles’ stomach, back against Peter’s own belly, and Peter subsided with a ragged whine.

“Come on, Peter,” Stiles said. He rammed himself up into Peter, hard enough to jar a little awareness into the man’s glazing eyes. Gave Peter’s lower lip a bite, then caught his gaze as Peter jerked away. “You really think that scares us? You’re smarter than that.”

Peter stared up at him, mouth hanging open, panting into Stiles’ face. Stiles could see right down his throat, could see the dark sides of it spasm, maybe trying to say something—then Peter jerked his head to the side, into the bed. Stretching his neck so that when Lydia rose from licking a scar on it, her face was nearly touching Stiles.

She smiled and licked Stiles, right across the lower lip, and then he leaned over and kissed her, while Peter gasped and writhed and came, trapped between them. Peter was whining into Stiles’ shoulder even as Lydia moaned into Stiles’ mouth.

Then Lydia pulled away. She slid over Stiles and Peter, her hair whisking silkily against Stiles’ shoulder for a second, and then she was behind Stiles. He still had Peter slumped against him, so he nudged the man, and when that didn’t do it, he freed a hand and wrapped it over Peter’s nape.

Peter immediately stiffened, then hauled up his head even though he was still shaking. Then he blew out whatever he’d been about to say in a strangled moan as Stiles pulled out of him. The moment Stiles wasn’t supporting him, he rolled forward, his hands pushing feebly at the bed. His head moved like he was going to try and crawl towards Lydia, who was lying down alongside him again, and then he shuddered and arched as Stiles dropped behind him, then pushed his still-hard cock back into Peter.

“That,” Peter gasped, as Stiles hooked the man’s arms back by the elbows, put his mouth right against Peter’s throat. “You think—”

“Oh, we don’t think you’re going to drop and do whatever we want, just because Stiles bites you there,” Lydia said. She pressed up against Peter, her hands dropping below their waists. Then she hitched up, tensed, and then she let out a long, low sigh, relaxing. Taking in his still-softening cock just as Stiles sank his teeth into Peter’s neck. “But this makes you _want_ to, doesn’t it?”

She could always hold out a little longer. Stiles could hear the urgency growing in her voice—she had both hands down, she had to be working herself, Peter was still too shaky to be much good—but she was still calm enough to make that sound coy. As for Stiles, well, he didn’t know if Lydia was waiting for him to chime in, but he wasn’t about to. Holding back from biting Peter about used up the last of his patience.

He dragged Peter by the arms and fucked into him, quick and hard. Peter shuddered, making small, struggling noises, but when he rocked forward, Lydia was pushing him right back onto Stiles’ cock. She shoved him hard enough to make Stiles’ teeth slide on his neck, into the scarred patch, and Peter abruptly whimpered, then went completely silent. Just trembling between them, swaying till first Stiles and then Lydia muffled their gasps into him.

Lydia recovered first, lifting her hand and petting at Peter’s shoulder. Peter twitched, then let out a ragged noise, hurt but wanting. He shifted around Stiles’ cock, then pressed his head into the bed and gasped a few times. Whimpered again when Stiles rubbed his thumbs down the scarring on his arm, and then sucked in his breath hard.

“You say you mean to stay,” he said. He could barely talk, but the suspicion came through clear enough. The bitter hope was a little fainter, but still there. “But the first thing you thought was that Chris Argent would’ve run.”

“Well, why do you think he hasn’t?” Stiles asked.

“Because I heard his family died,” Peter said. He paused to catch his breath again. “He did care about them, I’ll give him that. He ran away from here in the first place for their sake. So what would he have to run for now?”

“I have no idea,” Lydia said. She moved and Peter made a throat-caught, pained noise, and then Lydia moved back against him, raising her hand to cup over where Stiles’ fingers were still circling Peter’s arm. “For that matter, I have no idea why you haven’t.”

Peter stirred strongly enough that Stiles let go of him, but when Stiles and Lydia made to pull away, Peter made a soft, almost inaudible noise. It sounded like the noise Chris had made, exhausted and needy, and they stopped.

“Because of that,” Peter muttered. He gestured weakly at the far wall, which had been carefully fitted around some protruding roots. “The Nemeton. It—the damn thing, it healed me. A little, enough so that I’m crippled instead of bedridden. We don’t know why, and we’ve damned well never gotten it to help again, but I can’t go far enough from it. _That’s_ what you’re getting.”

Lydia hesitated, though Peter wasn’t even looking at her; he had his face pressed firmly into the bed. Then she pushed herself up. She looked at Stiles, and then turned a little away so that she could start to comb out her hair with her fingers.

“We’re staying,” she said.

Peter moved his head. Moved it more when Stiles sighed, though he didn’t go so far as to try and crane around to see Stiles. 

“We’re done running, let’s leave it at that,” Stiles said. He caught Lydia’s sharp look, but shrugged. Sure, that was more than they had to say right now, but they were running out of time anyway. “And the Alphas, well, first we figured have them think we’re just more druids and sucker them in. Maybe try poisoning them.”

“Once we all got to know each other better,” Lydia said. “You can’t simply walk up to one and ask them to drink from this bottle.”

“You’re not speaking to Derek, you know,” Peter said dryly. He moved again, into Stiles, and then tilted his head as Lydia reached out and flicked a curl that was stuck to his forehead. “I thought it was something like that, but I don’t think you’ll have the time now. Chris Argent being on the loose has made them too angry. They’re no longer interested in taking any sort of risk.”

“Yeah, we noticed,” Stiles said. He eased back and Peter twitched around his cock, then sighed and just rolled onto his belly as Stiles pulled out of him.

“It wouldn’t be safe to use the Nemeton either,” Lydia said. “Before you suggest that. It’s only a victory if someone survives, and if we woke the tree up that much, we can’t guarantee that.”

Peter closed his mouth, very deliberately, and then drew his arms slowly up under himself so he could push up onto them. “Well, then, what were you thinking?”

Stiles dropped his head into his hand to hide his grimace. In all honesty—they hadn’t been, not really. They’d kept changing plans and then putting it off and off, and the more they knew they couldn’t do that anymore, the harder it was to bring it up. 

“That we didn’t want to deal with it in town,” he finally said, after a look at Lydia. “Still working on the rest. Why, have you thought of anything?”

“I’d like to say I had, but I’ve been rather distracted myself,” Peter muttered. He stretched a little, then put his hand to his scarred side. “Sneaking around roving bands of hunters doesn’t leave much time for thought. Not to mention it’s more than a little exhausting.”

“Well, we did think about _that_.” Lydia reached over the side of the bed, then came up with the cup of medicine. It looked a little less full than before, but it was pretty miraculous that it hadn’t gotten knocked over completely. “And did come to see.”

Peter’s eyes flicked from the cup to her to Stiles, and then settled on the cup again. He drew in a low breath, and then he shifted one arm out and took the cup. Pulled it towards him and looked into it, as if he still wasn’t sure what it had, or whether he wanted it.

“That’s very…kind of you,” he finally said, and then he looked up. “Tell me this, if you don’t mind—what did they do to you? Why not ally with them?”

“I think we just don’t like them very much, that’s all,” Stiles said. He shrugged at Peter, and then reached over and brushed the backs of his fingers against Peter’s throat. Held Peter’s gaze for a second, watching the man’s pupils widen, and then pulled away. “And we’ve decided to stay, and…”

“…that means we can’t just leave the people we dislike for the next town,” Lydia finished.

Peter looked up at them, still uncertain. And still showing it, too, which was more surprising. He started to ask something else, stopped himself, and then inhaled deeply as he looked back at the cup. His head tilted, and then he put that to his lips and drained it. Licked off his lips, looking thoughtful, then…relaxed, a long, satisfied noise coming from him as his shoulders spread, his head went back down on the bed.

“Well, I do think the place has been crying out for a decent druggist,” he said. He turned half-over onto his back, lazy, enjoying his satiation, and yet there was a definite invitation in the way his eyes half-closed, his belly stretched out. “Not that that’s your only attraction, of course, but…”

“Another?” Lydia said, holding up the water skin.

Peter smiled at them, and then held out the empty cup. “Thank you, yes.”


	8. Chapter 8

Stiles and Lydia left before Derek returned. It was still light out, but they made their way back to the ranch house as quickly as they could, keeping an eye out for any hunters or werewolves. They’d washed up before going—Peter had actual soap, and Stiles had a feeling that the man lending it to them was a better sign of his feelings than the tea—and they both had descenting charms with them, too. But they didn’t want to push their luck.

“Well, at least we know that that vervain wash really works,” Stiles said. “He didn’t pick up on Chris at all.”

“He didn’t sound that unfriendly about him either,” Lydia said. “And don’t look at me like that, you know what I mean. Contemptuous, yes. Dislike, yes. But it did sound like they might not immediately want to kill him.”

“Peter might not.” Something small and hard wedged under Stiles’ heel and he waved at Lydia, then hopped over to lean against a tree so he could take off and shake out his boot. “We don’t know about Derek. Anyway, aren’t we getting a little ahead of ourselves here? First, deal with not getting killed by the Alphas. We keep saying we’ll take care of that, now we—we have to think of something, Lyds. We have to.”

Lydia folded her arms over her chest. “I’ve been saying that—”

“Then you think of something!” Stiles snapped at her. He put his shoe back on, then got out two paces ahead before noticing that she wasn’t following.

When he looked back, Lydia blinked hard and started, and then she strode briskly up to him. She looked straight ahead, chin up, giving him a dismissive wave when he cleared his throat. “It wasn’t a trance, Stiles. I don’t see anything except…and why on earth is your great-uncle’s land still so wooded? This is a working ranch, isn’t it? It’s a wonder he ever made any money off the place.”

“I’m…pretty sure I pointed out that we haven’t even gone over most of the property, and also, you can graze cattle wherever, it’s just that the printers back home only show us the pretty plains ranches,” Stiles said. They were close enough to the house that he felt safe in slowing his pace, so that she had to keep turning around to glower at him.

She realized pretty quickly what he was doing, but she stalked on for a few more yards before coming to an abrupt halt, arms tucked around herself, rolling her eyes to hide how tense she was. “Yes?”

“Are you actually mad at my great-uncle?” Stiles said. “For dying and leaving us this place?”

Lydia sniffed at him, but as he came level with her, she swung around and looked irritably at the ground, the corner of her mouth twisting sourly. She unwrapped and rewrapped her arms around herself, and then she let them drop free for good as he slung his arm over her shoulders.

They started walking again—the boundary markers were just in sight—and Lydia sighed. “If we hadn’t gotten the news about your great-uncle, what do you think would’ve happened?” she asked. “Do you—”

“I think we were always going to stop,” Stiles said. “Maybe…maybe not here. But somewhere. You know the last time…we were running out, Lydia. We weren’t going to be able to do another time. We needed to stop.”

“Then why is it that every time I try and think about what to do, all I can think about is what we did before?” Lydia said. Her voice was sharp, but she leaned hard into him, almost to the point of huddling against his side. “Why is it—it’s like we were running so long, I can’t even think about how to do something different?”

“Because we’re so good at it. We don’t even need to talk about it, we just look at each other, and we know what to do, when to do it. It’s like putting on old boots for us,” Stiles said slowly. Then he leaned over and pressed his cheek to the top of her head for a second. “Yeah. I know. But look, we’re here now, things are different. We need to sit down and figure this out before they come after us and just _make_ it like all the other times.”

“Tonight. We’ll hash something out tonight. And if we have to do it in front of Chris…well, then we’ll do it,” Lydia muttered.

Stiles squeezed her shoulders. “Well, if he doesn’t like what he hears, that’s not our problem.”

She smiled at him again, just as brief, but even that quick, he could tell it was different. Not just a throwaway, but a real one, the kind of smile he used to dream about getting from her.

“I’m glad for that,” she said. “You know, I really am. I don’t even regret—it’s awful, I know, but I’m glad I have you. I didn’t want anyone to die, and if you asked, I wouldn’t—I wouldn’t trade people’s lives, but…I’m still glad. Nobody else would’ve ever understood.”

“I know,” Stiles said. He looked at her and…sometimes he didn’t just remember how he used to feel about her. Sometimes he almost did feel it, like he was standing in the dark but just on the edge of a circle of firelight.

They _were_ awful people, sure, he wasn’t going to deny it. But they did have each other. That’d always been enough before, and he didn’t see why it shouldn’t be enough here.

“We should probably start unpacking the books,” Stiles said, as they finally reached the house. “Oh, damn, you know—I was going to slip in something about what Peter had around. He mentioned that they’d managed to save their library.”

Lydia gave the side of the front door a sharp rap, then waited for the feet to step back from the other side. No matter how many times they reminded him, Chris would always come right up to it, even though he couldn’t open it without setting off the wards. They’d both nearly flattened him with the door several times. “Which ones were you thinking about?”

She opened the door, habit making her lean over so she wasn’t standing right in the doorway; Stiles had instinctively shifted to the other side. But Chris had at least remembered to back up to the fireplace, where they could see all his hands and feet, and so Stiles swung in and then shifted over. He leaned against the wall by the door, pulling off his boots and taking off his coat, as Lydia shut it behind them.

“Well, that little anecdote about those hunters shooting each other, that was interesting,” Stiles said. “And no, I wasn’t thinking we’d call up anything besides the Nemeton. Doesn’t mean we can’t make better use of what we’ve already got—what?”

He’d just straightened up, his coat over his arm, and had found himself looking directly at Chris. Who was still by the fireplace, but he was visibly straining to keep himself there, tendons standing out from his neck and his forearms—his hands were balled into fists at his hips, and blood was seeping up from between his fingers. His nostrils were flared and his eyes were glassy.

“Chris,” Lydia snapped. She still had one hand on the door, and her other had gone to the slit in her skirts, for the knife she kept hidden there.

Stiles grabbed his too, thinking that the man was going to lunge at them, but when Chris moved, it was backwards. He cracked his knee into the floor, he was moving so fast—Stiles winced, the rap of it was so vicious—and then he half-spun so that he could grab at the hearthstone for support. But then he jerked his hand back and just huddled there over his knees, staring at them. He was shivering, and his breath was coming in pants so hard and fast that it was a miracle he didn’t pass out. His clawed-up palm had left a bloody streak over the hearth.

Lydia sucked in her breath slowly; Chris twitched himself lower, but at least didn’t…toss himself into the fire, or anything like that. And the way he looked, that didn’t seem out of the question.

“Chris?” Stiles said. 

“Yeah?” Chris said. He sounded…he was shaky, sure, but he sounded like he was in his right mind. His breathing was slowing—he was making it slow, his shoulders shivering harder with the effort, but he was getting there.

Chris was quiet and nervous, in between the odd bitter mutter, and reluctant to come near them or let them out of his sight, but generally he was very sane for somebody who’d…well, spent his first six months as a werewolf being tortured by the pack who’d turned him. He definitely had a lot more control over his shifts than anybody would’ve expected. Sometimes Stiles even forgot he _was_ a werewolf, he was so good at keeping that out of sight.

He wasn’t showing his claws now, or anything else, but the way he was holding himself, it was animal, not human. Stiles pressed his lips together, then noticed the pot bubbling over the fire behind the man. “Dinner?”

“It’s about done,” Chris said. He forced the last of his pants into a long, slow breath, and then he pulled himself around to the far side of the hearth, with sluggish, jerky movements.

He stiffened a little as Lydia moved. She stopped, then finished sliding the bolt on the door and then walked over to the fire to check on the pot. She was swinging her skirt a little more than usual, so that it would keep clear of her hands.

Stiles tried moving at that point, and Chris snapped his head around to watch, but when he didn’t start panting or anything like that, Stiles went ahead and hung up his coat. Then he and Lydia slowly fell into their normal evening routine, checking the drying herbs, doing a little household cleaning. They were about due for a laundry day, so Stiles helped Lydia pry open the crate that held their washing board. She set that, along with an extra bar of soap, by the pile of dirty clothes in the corner.

Chris normally would edge around them, helping with whatever they’d let him, but tonight he stayed by the hearth, just watching them with an unnerving, unreadable intensity. He did come over when dinner was set out, but he ate quickly, rinsed off his dish and then went back to the hearth.

It pretty much killed any conversation. After dinner Lydia did poke around in a few of the boxes that held their books, but after Stiles had shaken his head at the first two she held up, she seemed to lose her enthusiasm for it. He knew they’d just promised each other to do it, but…he told himself, he’d bring it up after they went to bed, so they at least didn’t have to deal with Chris’ staring.

Lydia clearly felt the same, and started readying herself to turn in a good few hours earlier than usual. She went into the bedroom, shaking out her hair from its bun, and Stiles would have followed, except that Chris abruptly rose and did that first.

The man hung back enough to make it clear it wasn’t an attack, though when Lydia glanced back, he simply shifted off to the side of the sleeping platform instead of curling up against the wall like usual. Lydia watched him warily for a few minutes, combing out her hair; Chris did not look comfortable, whatever he was thinking, but he seemed to be set on it. He stayed there even after Stiles had come in.

Lydia set her comb down, loosened her shift a little, and then she climbed onto the bed. At this point they normally had to lure Chris in, but he came over on his own, before Lydia had even opened her mouth to start the usual barrage of sarcasm. He paused at the edge, his knees just on it, still with that odd stare, and then he slipped across and between them. The jerky movements were gone and he was downright snaky about it, too-thin legs whispering across the sheets so that Stiles noticed a second late that he was pressing a lot closer than usual.

Chris’ head went against Stiles’ shoulder, the stubble on his cheek rasping through Stiles’ sleeve as he nuzzled it. His knees came up too, rubbing into Stiles’ shins and then thighs, and then he twisted around, just as Lydia reached down, so her hand got a fistful of his shirt instead of his neck.

And he used that, ducking quickly down and then away as she pulled sharply at his shirt. His head was out of it before she realized what she had, and then he was bare-chested and rubbing into her, pressing his face just under her collarbone and making soft noises.

Stiles shook off his confusion, then grabbed Chris by the nape and elbow. He’d just started jerking the man back—Chris broke into a sharp, protesting whine—when Lydia clicked her tongue at him. She and Stiles looked at each other, and then Stiles kept his grip but let Chris settle back against Lydia.

Whining more quietly, Chris rocked his head against Lydia so that his neck arched back into Stiles’ hand. His trousers, which were too loose anyway—they didn’t have a belt to lend him—slipped halfway down his hips, and then he twisted himself right out of them, pushing them down with his feet so that he sank back against Stiles completely naked.

“Smell,” Lydia said suddenly. 

Chris jerked. His hand had been creeping back to clutch at Stiles’ hip, but he jerked that away. Then he twisted over again, so quick that Stiles didn’t have time to tighten up his grip, and suddenly Stiles had Chris moaning into his mouth, yanking down his trousers and then feverishly trying to mount his thigh.

Stiles shoved back. He couldn’t break their mouths apart but he got them rolled over, which—just encouraged the man. Chris sprawled out under him, one arm locked around Stiles’ neck even when Stiles grabbed him by the front of the throat. Rocking up into Stiles’ hips, and then falling back to shudder, legs sprawling open, when Stiles forced up his chin.

“Smell, we still smell like—” Lydia was saying. She had backed off but then stopped, waiting to see if Stiles wanted her to get the man off or to come in and help.

“We washed,” Stiles grunted, finally getting his mouth free. He kicked off his trousers, then pushed up over Chris.

Chris snarled, then started laughing bitterly as he nosed up under Stiles’ jaw, mouthing hot and wet till Stiles took his chin in one hand and forced his head over. “I can still smell them, I can smell them,” he muttered, groaning, trying to arch his throat even though Stiles already had him baring it. “Some goddamn omega—”

“You can’t tell it’s Peter?” Stiles said, not thinking.

Lydia hissed and Stiles was tensing even before that, tightening his hold on Chris’ throat. And Chris did jerk, his visible eye widening, but then he choked out another one of those hollow laughs.

“That’s what he smells like?” Chris said. He shifted restlessly against Stiles’ grip, not fighting it, fighting something else, and then he snarled again, snarled and whined at the same time, sliding himself up against Stiles in an unmistakable invitation. “Fuck, and he smells like you now. Both of you, I can smell— _fuck_.”

“At least it wasn’t an alpha?” Lydia said. She came back over, clamping her hand over Chris’ arm, and then sliding it up and across to his chest as he stared at her.

“Jesus Christ,” Chris said. His eyelids fluttered and he breathed in sharply as she let her fingers drift along his pectoral, teasing where he was pressing into Stiles. “God, you two, you’re both sons of bitches.”

“If you’re going to call me names, then just make it ‘bitch.’ I’m not the ‘of’ of anything,” Lydia said sharply. And then she leaned over and kissed him. She pushed Stiles over, making him let go of Chris’ throat, so that she could put her hands around his head.

She was digging in with her nails, Stiles could see the whitened skin and then the red marks through Chris’ hair. Chris didn’t seem to mind it, moaning for her just as urgently as he had for Stiles. He was a lot more frantic than Peter had been, frantic and careless, almost clawing into the sheets before Stiles caught his wrist and hauled up his hand.

But responsive: Stiles squeezed his wrist and the claws disappeared. And then Chris hauled his hands off the bed and pushed them into Lydia’s shift. He was bunching it up, trying to get it off her legs, and then she shifted up, pressing her breasts out of her neckline and against his mouth, and his fingers slacked off, let the shift fall back to about mid-thigh. And let go altogether as Stiles climbed back onto him, arms dropping limply back to the bed.

He was spreading his knees, hiking them back. When Stiles’ knee dropped between them, Chris ground himself down onto it, wedging it between his buttocks like he wanted to split himself up the middle. It was goddamned asking for it, and Stiles thought—but no, everything was in the other room, and Stiles wasn’t up to peeling away and walking those couple yards.

Instead he pulled Chris’ thigh over and back down, straddling it. Lydia was already working Chris’ other leg, holding up her skirts with one hand since Chris wasn’t able to do it. She was moving in long, slow downward rocks, and when Stiles reached over to the leg she had, he swiped up a faint slick line from Chris’ thigh.

He twisted around her, lifting his arm over her head, and then pushed those fingers into Chris’ mouth, right with the nipple Chris was nursing. Chris let out a strangled, stuttering noise when he tasted it, his head falling back. Then he made the noise again, shuddering, as Stiles craned in and started sucking along his neck.

Chris turned his head, Lydia’s nipple coming out of his mouth with a soft, wet pop, and then wrapped his lips and tongue around Stiles’ fingers as if he was trying to soak them down to the bone. Stiles let him work at them for a little bit, just pinning his own cock to Chris’ leg and biting his lip, but when he thought he had enough spit, he pulled them away. And Chris whined and chased after them, like a baby calf for its mother’s teat.

Stiles hissed, seeing that, and Lydia turned and then caught his mouth. She kissed him deep and long, cupping his head—a lot more gently than she had with Chris—as he shoved his wet fingers down and finally started rubbing them over his hard cock.

The spit didn’t last too long, but it was long enough for him to get some precome mixed into it. Long enough so it was just the right side of uncomfortable, that hot friction, and as he started rocking against Chris’ thigh, Lydia started moving with him.

She pushed them over, till she had her head on Chris’ shoulder. Stiles couldn’t lie down that much, not without losing the pressure he needed on his cock, but Chris was squirming anyway and somebody needed to hold him down. So Stiles pinned his free arm across Chris’ shoulder, leaning his weight against it. Leaned over it, pulling away once in a while to suck at Chris’ moaning mouth.

Lydia worked him too, one of her hands against the side of his neck, fingers flat while her curled thumb drew its knuckle over and over along the flexing length of it. And then she’d stretch over and kiss Stiles again, or Stiles would get her, and under them Chris would whine and squirm, his cock swinging to graze their bellies as they rode his thighs.

Chris came first, even though neither of them were touching his cock. He kept squirming, even as his breath got harsh with lack of air, and when Lydia tightened up, biting down onto his shoulder, he was half-hard again by the time she lifted her head. She noticed when she shifted over to lean against Stiles, and her hand detoured from its path across Stiles’ thigh.

She trapped Chris’ cock up against his belly with it, then turned on her side so she could use her other hand to smear his come up towards his chest. He groaned and tried to sniff at the same time, and he was still trying to do that when Stiles came, sending a splatter down the inside of his thigh.

Stiles slumped off beside Chris and Lydia shifted onto him. She scraped up Stiles’ come and then planted her coated fingers on Chris’ chest, fanning them across his pectoral. Then she rubbed their tips over Chris’ skin, slow and circling, as Stiles dragged himself up and then rolled in to bite Chris’ throat again.

That sent Chris over. He bucked hard enough to make Lydia slide off him, then fell back, shuddering. Twisting over with it, even as his body slowly went limp, starting with his toes and moving up, so that when he finally went still, it was with his face tucked under Stiles’ chin.

“Well, that should do it, shouldn’t it?” Lydia said, fitting herself up against Chris’ back.

Chris made a noise into Stiles’ collarbone that was somewhere between surprise and resentment—strangely like Peter, actually—even as his shoulders rolled back to press into her. “Jesus Christ,” he muttered. “What are you looking to do, build your own pack out of us?”

“When in Rome,” Stiles said. He felt Chris go stiff and…he was too tired for this. And now they had to clean up the bed, and themselves, and he just—he wondered for a second if he could just roll off onto the floor, and be done with it. “I’m kidding. We haven’t honestly thought much about it.”

“You what?” Chris said.

“We haven’t. Thought about it.” Lydia sounded just as tired, though she dragged herself back and then sat up. She looked irritably at the distance separating her from the water barrel, and then she grimaced and got off the bed. Pulled her shift off as she went, just tossing it in the general direction of the laundry pile as she collected some rags and an empty bucket.

Stiles pulled back as well, only to have Chris move with him, nosing at his shoulder and making anxious noises. He started to push the man off, and then gave up and just flopped where he was. He’d get up and strip the bed when Lydia got back with the water. “Stop that. And stop being so…why are you all always asking these goddamned questions? We’ve been here less than a _month_.”

“Because it’s looking like we’re all going to die soon, in a pretty damn bad way,” Chris said. He lifted his head and looked at Stiles—he wasn’t accusing, didn’t sound angry or frustrated either. He just seemed like he didn’t understand what was going through their heads, and like he was set on figuring that out. “And you’re smart enough to know that, and you act like you’ve dealt with this before, and you’re the new ones. The rest of us, we all know how we’ll each jump, but we don’t know about you.”

Lydia came back, thumping the bucket down on the floor. She stooped over and lifted her hands as if to pull at the sheets, but then dropped them to the mattress, even as Stiles was dragging himself up. She leaned on them, her eyes closing briefly, and then she turned around and sat down.

“Well, we’ve been here before,” she said tiredly. She fingered her ring, her mouth twisting, and then she abruptly pushed her hands down to the bed. “Not _here_. In the metaphorical sense. So yes, we’re used to it.”

“I think that might be the problem,” Stiles sighed. “Well. One of them. Honestly, we’ve got a lot. You might not have noticed, and that’s understandable, what with your—”

“What happened?” Chris said. He hesitated as they both looked at him. Then he pulled himself off Stiles, and back onto his knees and arms. He started to gather in the sheets around him, but looked up while he was doing that. “If you don’t want to give out the details…how many people died?”

“Which time?” Stiles made himself get up as the sheets pulled tight under him, then shifted onto the bare mattress. He felt over it, searching for damp spots, while Lydia took the sheets from Chris and wrapped them up in each other. Then took his shirt and added it to the bundle.

Chris was silent for a few minutes. Lydia handed over damp rags and he cleaned himself off, then settled back by Stiles as she carried out the bucket and the dirty laundry, and came back with their last clean blanket to throw over the mattress for now.

“It’s the first time that mattered, right?” Chris said.

Lydia shot Stiles a look and he wasn’t going to say anything, but then she sighed. “Well, I suppose most of the other times, we didn’t care about the people who died.”

She climbed back onto the bed, bringing a shawl with her. It was barely big enough for them, but they didn’t have anything else. The heated platform could make up for it, though that meant they’d have to get up more often to build the fire back up, but for now they tucked up against each other. Stiles was going to tug the shawl down, but something touched his arm.

He stopped and Chris rolled up against him. The man didn’t fight for any part of the shawl, just seeming to want to press flesh, but when Stiles laid an arm over him, he breathed out in relief.

“I thought you cared about that sort of thing,” Lydia said. “I doubt it’s in line with your old code.”

“I think,” Chris said, careful and slow. “That everything I used to know got turned upside-down a long time ago. And I just…now I just want a little rest, first.”

“I think we’ve moved around so much we don’t remember what that is,” Stiles muttered.

Lydia brushed her lips across the back of his neck, then wrapped her hands around either side of his waist. They were both waiting for another question, but Chris seemed to have run out. He just shifted once, moving his head to lean against Stiles’ chest, and then stilled.

They needed to come up with something, Stiles reminded himself, closing his eyes. In the morning. No later than that.


	9. Chapter 9

Stiles fully intended to talk things over with Lydia the next day. They had the laundry to do, which would get them out of the house where they could have some privacy, and it’d also keep them in one place till they figured out how to talk about it.

Except then Derek showed up.

“Hunters,” he said, stumbling out of the brush. He had blood over one side of his face, and was clutching one thigh with both hands, black stuff seeping up between his fingers.

Lydia slung her armful of wet laundry back into the basket, then stepped over it, knife and clothesline in hand. She went towards Derek, then sighed as he jerked away. “If you’ve been shot, you need a tourniquet before we dig out the bullet,” she snapped. “Or else werewolves _can_ bleed—”

“I’m not going to die right now, we need to go get Peter,” he snapped back. He fell against a tree, then raised one hand to flap behind him. “We were tracking one, and then ran into another bunch. Split up, but they were running him away from the tree and—”

“Yeah, yeah, he can’t get that far, he’s mentioned it.” Stiles took the clothesline from Lydia and cut off a piece from the end. He cut the back of his forearm too, smeared the blood from that over the rope, and then quickly looped and knotted it around a nearby branch. That’d mask Derek’s scent till he could get back and douse the spot with an herbal rinse.

Then he stepped past the marker. He got Derek by one arm, hauled the man forward till Derek was up against the barrier, and then tapped Derek’s wounded leg. Rolled his eyes when Derek snarled at him. “I need your actual blood, not just this black stuff.”

Derek snarled again, but he pried his hand off his leg. Then he leaned over Stiles, jabbing his claws into a tree trunk as Stiles prodded around in the bullet hole and got some blood. He kept snarling by Stiles’ ear, but given what his leg looked like, that was a pretty mild reaction.

Once Derek was through the wards, Stiles dropped him and then pulled out a rag from the laundry basket. He wrapped up Derek’s leg in it for now, and then used a corner to wipe off his fingers. “Don’t suppose you know what kind of wolfsbane it was?” he muttered.

Derek reached into his pocket and pulled out a fistful of bullets. “We did get the one,” he said, grinning viciously.

“Oh, well, lucky break for once,” Stiles said. He got up, then held his hand out to Derek. “All right, into the house.”

“But Peter,” Derek said, keeping his hands down. His grin was gone, and when Stiles didn’t immediately say anything, he snarled again, head jutting forward so his teeth nearly raked Stiles’ fingertips. “You two—you can’t just—just play around with it, we’re _werewolves_ , it means something when—”

“You know, just because you’re an asshole doesn’t mean everybody is,” Stiles snapped. He side-stepped, then swiveled back, just fast enough to avoid Derek’s hand, and then he got hold of the man by the elbow.

He yanked Derek forward. Kept hold of his knife in case Derek decided to be difficult about that, too, but thankfully, Derek just kept it to resentful glowering as they limped across the ground. “He actually _told_ you about the tree,” Derek said. “He showed you where we live. And I know what the hell you did with him, it fucking smelled like a—”

“And it’s really not our fault if _Peter’s_ an asshole to you,” Stiles muttered.

“Even if he’s an asshole, we need to go after him,” Derek snarled. “They’ll kill him.”

“We are,” Lydia said. She’d gone back to the house with the rest of the laundry, and as they came up, she stepped out. She had a rifle in one hand and was towing Chris by the other, heading for the stables.

Chris already looked resigned about it. When Derek jerked up, snarl dropping into a guttural, furious roar, Chris shifted back into a half-crouch, but he was alert, not alarmed. His mouth was set in a thin, tight line that didn’t waver at all.

“Are you—are you joking?” Derek said, looking between Stiles and Lydia. “He’s been—this is where he’s been?”

“You’re wounded, Stiles isn’t going, and I can’t carry Peter by myself if he’s injured,” Lydia said. “Do you want us to help him or not?”

“And he’s going with you to _help_ Peter,” Derek said, voice dripping with angry disbelief.

Stiles still had him by the arm, but Derek was stretched out as far as he could, trying to get a clear shot at Chris. But his leg was getting weak, his knee kept almost giving out under him, and as he stumbled around, Lydia yanked Chris—who hadn’t moved at all—ahead of her, then slapped him on the back to keep him going. And incidentally put herself between him and Derek, with her back to Derek.

“Don’t even try,” Stiles said. The next time Derek’s leg wobbled, he hauled on Derek’s arm, giving it a twist to knock Derek’s balance into tilting towards the house. “I know you think I’m being mean to you, but trust me, I’m saving you a lot of pain and suffering. Lydia hates wasting ammunition.”

“But that’s—” Derek panted. He caught himself against the house, then shoved himself off it. He actually was still trying to go after Lydia.

Stiles caught his arm again, then dragged him into the house. “Chris, last scion of the horrible Argents, yeah, we’ve been introduced.”

Derek’s nostrils flared. As soon as he was over the threshold, he lunged for the far wall and then plastered himself against it, half-sunk against a crate but still coiling himself up for a go. “Yeah, I smell _that_. I can’t believe Peter—”

“Doesn’t know.” Stiles shut the door. Then he got a shovel and a coal from the fireplace, and carried the coal on the shovel blade over to Derek. “Because hey, we weren’t setting out to make things complicated. We just wanted to not kill everybody we met.”

“So you fucked them instead?” Derek snapped. He’d slipped down the wall, onto one knee, and his color was going a sickly white.

“Well, yeah. So, you want to die of poisoning, or are you going to take care of that so we can keep arguing?” Stiles said.

Derek shut his mouth hard enough for his teeth to click. He stared up at Stiles, rage and disgust boiling in his eyes, and for a second Stiles thought he might actually have to knock out the idiot.

Then Derek’s lips twisted. He jerked his hand off the crate, paused, and then he sat down, tight-lipped, and ripped the rag off his leg. He pulled a bullet from his pocket, broke it open and then dumped out the powder contents onto the shovel blade, close enough to the coal that a spark off it landed in the powder and set it alight. Once it was smoking, he scooped it up and then stuffed it into the hole in his thigh.

Stiles stepped back and tossed the coal back into the fire, and put the shovel away. Lydia had just dropped the laundry by the door, so he went and got the basket, and what was left of the clothesline. After tossing Derek a couple more rags to clean up his leg, Stiles strung a line between the walls and started to hang up the wash. With the limited space, they’d have to do it in batches, maybe ten, but he was thinking he could build up the fire and that’d at least speed it up. He could grab more wood when he went out to do something about Derek’s trail.

Speaking of. “Did you run straight over here?” Stiles asked.

“Last couple hundred yards, but I doubled back a couple times, hit a few streams before that,” Derek said, with surprising straightforwardness. “Do you even know what you’re doing?”

“Did you think about that before or after you ran here for help?” Stiles muttered. He hung up the last dress, then pushed the basket aside for now and went to get supplies out of the herbal chest. “Look, Derek, I know you all have this incredibly complicated feud with each other, but Lydia and I weren’t here for any of that.”

“Yeah, well, do you think Peter’s going to still like you so much when he finds out about Argent?” Derek said.

Stiles held up a vial, uncorked and sniffed at it, and then put it away and dug deeper into the chest. “I’m not sure if that’s the start of a blackmail attempt, or if you’re just curious, but if he doesn’t like it, then he doesn’t like it,” he muttered. “He doesn’t have to invite us over for tea if he doesn’t want to.”

“Are you joking?” Derek said. He let out an incredulous, bitter laugh. “We’re werewolves. And you’ve got Peter thinking that you actually _mean_ to stick around—”

“Because we do,” Stiles said, turning around. “This is our ranch now, we’re keeping it. And if you want to be friendly neighbors, well, honestly, we’d really like that, but you don’t have to.”

“Peter thinks you’re going to be more than just neighbors,” Derek snapped. “I don’t think you’re stupid, I think you know that. But you’re just like everybody else who’s shown up here. Just using us for whatever you want.”

“If you all want to kill each other, you can go off and do that somewhere else,” Stiles snapped back. “I don’t know what you’re thinking, but we didn’t sleep with your uncle because we thought it’d keep him from killing Chris, if they ran into each other. And we weren’t hiding Chris from you because we’re siding with his family, or anything like that. His goddamn family’s _dead_ anyway.”

“Then why act like you like us?” Derek said. “If you don’t care what we do to each other—”

Stiles stuffed a bunch of vials into his hands and then slapped the chest lid down. He twisted around and started shaking and dumping herbs into a bucket of water, deliberately not looking at Derek. “We _do_ like you. Well, we like Peter, and you’re annoying but I mostly don’t want to kill you, though you’re really working on Lydia’s nerve. And Chris is…well, what, should we throw him out for the Alphas? We’re not acting, Derek. It’s just we don’t want to deal with your damned vendetta, all right? We have enough problems of our own.”

He gave the bucket a swirl, then just picked it up and banged back outside. Halfway to the tree line, he realized he hadn’t set all the wards.

“To hell with it,” Stiles muttered, and just kept on going. If Derek wrecked the place while he was hiding the man’s trail, he’d just…he’d deal with it when he got back.

Derek didn’t. In fact, it didn’t look like he’d moved at all, except to slit open his trouser leg and finish cleaning off his thigh. He did look up when Stiles came in, putting his head back against the wall.

“You look less like you want to turn this into some stupid fight about who we like better,” Stiles said. He dropped off the bucket and firewood. Then he shut and locked the door, and leaned against it. “I thought you and Peter didn’t like each other.”

“He’s still pack and family,” Derek muttered. His eyes flicked off to the side, then came back to Stiles as he rubbed at the side of his face. “Anyway…I think we’re about even about what _we’ve_ done to each other. And honestly, nobody deserves what the Alphas do. You’re right, I wouldn’t hand Argent over either. But I wouldn’t sleep with him.”

“Nobody’s asking you to,” Stiles said dryly. He pushed off the door, then stopped. Then he picked up his hat, frowning at all the dirt on it. He almost told Derek that the man could’ve just kept it, if Derek was going to bring it back like that, and then shrugged that off and tossed it to the side.

“And I wouldn’t pack up with him,” Derek added.

Stiles didn’t respond to that. Instead he went to the herbal chest again. He set out a few more vials, pulled down some bunches from the drying wall, and just went around getting the place ready for when the others got back.

“How bad does Peter get?” he asked.

“The hunters hadn’t hit him, when we split,” Derek said after a moment. He shifted up the wall, then got slowly to his feet, his slit trouser leg flapping. His thigh was all healed, but he moved slowly, with a lot of grimacing, like an old rheumatic. “If he can stay that way, not that bad. Just a lot of rest and meat. Which we haven’t had in a _long_ time.”

“Tree doesn’t help with that?” Stiles said.

Derek made a face. He stayed against the wall, his hands twitching occasionally as he watched Stiles shift over to preparing dinner. “The Nemeton is just as bad as everybody else,” he muttered. “Sometimes I think he wishes it hadn’t healed him.”

Something about how he said that, maybe the uneasy way his shoulders moved, made Stiles look more closely at him. “But you live right under it. You have to, that’s what he said.”

“Yeah, we do, and so we’re stuck here,” Derek said, shrugging. “He didn’t want to leave—he and my sister Laura, they fought about that, before the Alphas killed her. But we’re just _stuck_ here, and nothing ever gets better, and now he’s—I don’t know, he acts like he sees things. And he told me about what you’re doing with it, and that that’s normal, but _I’m_ not seeing anything.”

“Like what?” Stiles said. “What’s he seeing?”

He sounded a little too eager. Derek’s head went up and his eyes narrowed, and he clammed up. Stiles almost snapped at the man, and then he made himself calm down, and just cut up potatoes. There wasn’t any point in getting in the same argument with Derek about who was fucking who over.

“Used to be Laura,” Derek said abruptly. He took a step away from the wall, stopped, and then came over to stand by the bench where Stiles was cutting vegetables. He looked into the pot, sniffed, and then stood back with a faintly amused look when Stiles lifted the knife in warning. “I think. It’s not like he talks about it with me. But the Nemeton—they’ve always said that part of the woods is haunted, you know. I haven’t seen anything, but Peter would…sometimes I’d overhear him at night, and he’d be talking like she was there.”

“Used to be?” Stiles said.

Derek slid a wary look at him, and then moved down to the far end of the bench. He grabbed his thigh, the one that’d been shot, and then let go with a grimace. “I don’t think he’s seeing her anymore,” he said. “That stopped around when you showed up. It’s why…I didn’t think we should trust you, and I still don’t know, but his mood got a lot better. But now he’s seeing some—some other thing. He keeps following it over to you two.”

“Well, if you gave me some more details, I could maybe look into it. But for the record, Lydia and I didn’t send this ‘thing’ after him,” Stiles said. “And what we’re doing with the Nemeton shouldn’t do that either, unless Peter already had some connection with—he wasn’t some friend of my great-uncle’s, was he? Or anybody else who lived in this house?”

“No,” Derek immediately said. “No. We didn’t have anything to do with your great-uncle or his hands. He moved in after the Alphas ran us out of town.”

“Yeah, well, then I don’t know.” Stiles filled up the pot with the cut-up vegetables, then set it over the fire to boil. He wiped off his hands and his knife, and then looked around to see what else…he checked the hanging laundry, but none of it was dry yet.

“Why aren’t you out there with them?” Derek abruptly said. “Because if you think you’ve got to stay and watch me, I’m not going to do anything.”

Stiles raised his brows. “When you don’t trust me.”

“I said I’m not sure,” Derek said. He rubbed at the side of his face, then dropped his hand to his thigh, rubbing where the bullet hole had been. “But—fine, you know, you seem better than the Alphas so far. I still…I don’t like you having Argent around, but you’re right. There are bigger fights right now. If he doesn’t come after me or Peter, then I’m not planning on coming after him.”

“Well, thanks, I bet Chris will appreciate that,” Stiles said. He snorted at the irritated look Derek gave him, then decided he might as well clean off his hat. “Lydia will be fine, believe me. She probably isn’t going to get Chris involved at all, except that she really can’t lift Peter by herself if he’s hurt, even if she’s got the horse with her.”

“The Alphas don’t hire people who can’t hunt,” Derek insisted. “I know they don’t look like it when they’re drinking, but they got _me_. So shouldn’t you—”

“No, I shouldn’t, and we’re going to leave it at that.” Stiles picked up his hat, then carried it over so that when he shook off the dirt, it’d mostly go into the waste bucket. “She’ll be fine. She might even like you a little better, hearing that you’re worried about her.”

Derek snorted. “I’m not worried about her. She’s _your_ wife.”

“You know what?” Stiles said, looking over his shoulder at him. “Fine, you want to know a little secret about us? Will that make you feel better? We’re not actually married. We just—we’re probably common law by now, we’ve been together long enough, but we never went to church, never stood up in front of the priest, never got the license. Actually, she used to be engaged to a neighbor of mine.”

For a few blissful seconds, Derek was completely silent. He just sat there and stared, and Stiles went on with brushing down his hat. Which was really, seriously filthy. He remembered it falling into the muddy road, but the way it looked, it was as if Derek had then dragged it through the whole forest.

“I do love her,” Stiles muttered, giving the hat a hard smack. “And I know her a lot better than you. If I went out, it’d just make things worse, the same way that I think I was actually fine without this. I’m not sure if you returning it like this was supposed to be an insult or—”

“Return what?” Derek said. “What, your hat? That was already there, I didn’t touch it.”

Stiles looked at him, but Derek was just…he just looked annoyed and confused, and when Stiles swore and threw the hat down, Derek started up onto his feet in genuine surprise.

“You don’t see things,” Stiles snapped. He looked at Derek. “Right? You don’t hear them either?”

“I don’t know what I should be hearing,” Derek said slowly. He lifted his hand a little, then put it down. “Are you…what’s the matter with you?”

“Nothing.” Stiles stared at the hat, and then he kicked it up, and he booted it into the fire. He watched it burning for a few seconds, before turning around and grabbing the basket of laundry. “Nothing. And I’m not going out. Now sit down, shut up, and wait for Lydia to bring your uncle back.”

Derek sat down. Stiles stayed up, standing over the basket as he wrung out wet clothes, but eventually his legs started to ache. He looked around, then sat down on a crate and shifted the basket over so he could reach from there.

Another hand reached for it and Stiles looked up. “They’re clean,” Derek said, holding out his fingers.

“Well, stick with the sheets, you don’t know how Lydia likes her dresses done,” Stiles muttered after a moment. “Werewolves are pretty helpful with the chores, considering what assholes you are the rest of the time.”

Derek raised his brows, but he was a little smarter than Stiles on this one, and didn’t say anything. They just worked at the laundry, while the sun started to set and the woods outside grew dark and quiet.

* * *

Stiles was outside when Lydia and Chris showed up with Peter. He’d finished everything he could in the house, except for rechecking the wards, and he wasn’t about to do that with Derek watching. Even if Derek had decided to be slightly less hostile.

So he went out to the stable. Derek wanted to come with him, but Stiles fobbed him off by pointing out that somebody had to keep dinner from boiling over, and also, it wouldn’t be helping Stiles if their one remaining ox got nervous over smelling a werewolf and charged him. Between hiding Stiles’ scent and Lydia taking the horse with her, they were fresh out of scent-maskers. So Derek stayed in the house and watched from the windows. Probably let their dinner burn, considering he didn’t move the entire time Stiles was out. 

And then Stiles was done with the stable, too. He was standing near one of the boundary markers, wondering whether it’d be worth it to step over and go check the cattle pen, when he heard, very distinctly, a woman speaking to him.

She sounded like she had her mouth right next to her ear; he could feel breath puffing over it. “Look out,” she said. “They’re coming.”

Stiles didn’t look over. He knew nobody was standing next to him. Instead he looked straight on as he had been, and slid his hand to his knife, ticking it out of the sheath with his thumb. He twisted the back of his finger across the little bit of blade that came out, then lifted his hand as if to run it over his head, only to quickly flick a drop of blood at the side where she’d been.

Then he turned around. He didn’t see a woman, or anyone—or anything else.

“It’ll be all right,” Scott said. “Just wait. Wait for me.”

Stiles jerked backwards, forgetting about his bloody finger. Then he swung around—he did see somebody this time, and had his hand up for casting when he realized who he was looking at.

Peter picked up on Stiles’ unnerved air, slumped as he was over Chris’ shoulder. He was limping very heavily and had patches of blood on him, though none of them looked fresh. They didn’t have the horse with them any more. Lydia was helping on Peter’s other side, but when she saw Stiles, she dropped Peter’s arm and rushed forward.

“Who?” she said, grabbing Stiles’ shoulders.

“I don’t—I don’t—we didn’t go far enough,” Stiles muttered, trying to shake her off. He looked around over her head, past the other two, but…nothing. “Lyds, we—”

“We’re not leaving,” she said. She jerked him forward, their noses bumping roughly, and then yanked down on his shoulders so that he looked at her. “Stiles. No. No, we’re not, this was _it_. This was as far as we were going. You remember—we talked about it, we decided.”

“Well, I don’t know if I can do this! I didn’t want to go through this again either, and now it’s like somebody’s _making_ sure we do!” Stiles snapped at her. He twisted at her grip, then just swung his arm in between them and shoved her off.

They both stumbled back a few steps. Lydia caught at her skirts, then looked at him, shaking her head. She put her hand out and she looked so—she looked so _terrified_ , and…

Stiles slewed around, hearing a twig snap. He and Lydia both froze, their hands on their knives.

“Sorry,” Chris said. He and Peter were standing right up against the marker, and both of them looked as if they badly wanted to know what was going on. Then Chris grimaced that off. He raised his foot and tapped it against the barrier. “Can you—”

“We don’t have time for it anyway,” Lydia snapped. She was suddenly a flurry of motion, stalking past Stiles and then grabbing Chris and Peter in either hand, and pulling them through the barrier. “The Alphas are out, and I think they spotted Chris. We sent the horse to lead them off but I don’t think that will last long.”

Alphas. Goddamn alpha werewolves, as if Stiles—he shook himself. Pressed the side of his hand against his face, then nodded. Which made Lydia relax just that tiny bit, and…well, no time to hate himself either. “Yeah, all right, Derek’s inside. Go ahead, I’ll do something about your tracks.”

“That doesn’t matter, they saw _me_ , if nothing else, and I still smell like both of you,” Peter said. “They’ll come here anyway.”

Stiles and Lydia looked at him—Peter had his shoulders hunched in, his head lowered, a surprising, visceral look of self-hatred on his face—and then at each other. Lydia started to let go of the other two, leaning as if to move towards Stiles, and Stiles shook his head at her. Then turned around, leading the way back up to the house.

“Guess we are staying,” Stiles muttered. He heard Lydia suck in her breath, but he didn’t turn around, and she didn’t call out to him. They both knew they might as well just take the time and get settled. It wouldn’t be too much longer; there was no point in rushing.

No point in running from it either. But he’d already known that. They both had. No matter what they did, they always ended up in the same place.

* * *

“If you want to run, then we’ll let you through the barrier,” Lydia said icily, facing down Derek’s glare. “But Stiles and I aren’t leaving.”

“We can’t move fast enough by ourselves,” Derek snapped. “Hell, we probably can’t even make it back to the Nemeton—”

“And what makes you think we’d make you move any faster?” Lydia said. “Do we look like we have a spare pair of wings to give you? Do we look like we have wings at all? Because that’s possibly the _only_ way we’d be able to evade that many hunters and alphas.”

Derek stared at her, then swung around to look incredulously at Stiles. “So you’re just going to stay here?”

“Pretty much,” Stiles said. He started to close the front door behind him, then stopped. “Look, are you going or not? Because she and I need to do a few things, and we can’t just sit around and wait for you to think it over.”

Snarling, pacing restlessly back and forth, Derek glowered at him. Bit back a reply, and then the man turned to Peter, who’d been listening in silence. Peter’s brows rose. “Yes?”

Derek jerked at him, almost lunging, and then he abruptly twisted away. He paced over to the far wall, stopped in front of it, and then came back to crouch next to Peter. He dropped his head and ran his hand irritably over it, then sighed heavily. Grabbed the rag Lydia had been about to give to Peter, glared off Chris, who’d actually been handing that bucket of water to her and not Peter, and then handed Peter the rag. Peter held it for a second, blinking in surprise, and then took a deep breath.

“You’re always getting us into fucking trouble,” Derek muttered. “Fine. So what, we’re going to eat dinner now? While we wait for them?”

“Well, you want to starve, again, that’s your choice,” Stiles said. He shut the door, and after a look around—neither Peter nor Chris even bothered to look up—he shot the bolt on it.

Lydia did look up. He…didn’t want to meet her gaze, but there wasn’t much else to look. It was just that he knew how she’d look. She always looked that way, when it came down to this. And he always hated himself for never figuring out how to not put that look on her face.

She turned away, going over to tend the fire. Stiles leaned against the door for a second, then sighed and pushed himself off. He headed for where they had the plates stacked up, rolling up his sleeves. They both knew what they had to do.


	10. Chapter 10

“It was careless of me,” Peter said quietly.

They were all sitting around after dinner, which was a little salty from boiling down too much, but which hadn’t burned. Derek had eaten three portions, in between giving everyone increasingly impatient, confused looks, while Peter had silently picked through a half-portion. Chris had eaten all of his single serving, but that mostly seemed to be something to keep him busy when he wasn’t explaining what had happened.

Peter had managed to evade the hunters, but then another group had run across him as he was trying to sneak back to the Nemeton, and that group had had Ennis with them. They’d been chasing him when Lydia and Chris had finally caught up. Lydia had shot Ennis, but probably not fatally, and he’d managed to send off a hunter to go get the other alphas.

“So they’ll gather up everybody first, then come together, right?” Stiles said. He set his bowl aside, just as Lydia reached for it. So he picked it up again and handed it to her, with a rueful shrug that she ignored. “Are they midnight mob types, or crack of dawn?”

“Midnight,” Chris said after a long moment. He looked uncertainly between Stiles and Lydia, and then gave Peter a glance that was…well, not as nice as sympathetic, but he certainly recognized the type of disbelief that was now all over Peter’s face. “I’m guessing, based on—on the pack that had me.”

Those two had been surprisingly civil, if icily so. Derek, on the other hand, had been keeping himself positioned for a clear shot at Chris the whole time, occasionally lifting his lip in a silent snarl when Chris got too close to him or Peter. And Peter had been bemused by _that_ , but didn’t seem that wary of Chris, while Chris just ignored Derek and addressed Peter if he needed to ask them something.

“Agreed,” Peter said. The sour tilt of his mouth indicated that he hadn’t forgotten or forgiven, however well-behaved he was being. But then he slumped again, and when Lydia collected his dish from him, he almost started and dropped it.

She jerked it to safety, giving him a glare, and then went off to start rinsing them by the water barrel. Stiles started to get up to help, since he actually was the one who usually did that, and she looked over her shoulder. He blinked, held up his hands and sat back down.

“I don’t understand the pair of you,” Peter said abruptly. He paused, then let out an edgy, slightly broken laugh, rubbing at the side of his face. “You do worry, I’ve smelled it on you. But never about the things that—that even the stupidest fool of a hero would. And—and I’ve set them right _on_ you—”

“Which you were leading up to anyway.” Stiles pulled out his looped string and started to wind it between his fingers, then unraveled the figure. He just let it hang, inching it absently between thumb and forefinger like it was a rosary. “Eventually. Right?”

Chris straightened up, looking more closely at Peter. Who didn’t pay attention. Derek did, though for the first second he looked the most outraged of the three of them—Chris just looked curious—and he dropped off his crate to crouch on the floor. Which just made Chris snort and look away. Then Chris got up and went to help Lydia, who seemed to be fine with that.

“Eventually,” Peter admitted, a flicker of his usual charm in his voice. Then he grimaced and rubbed at the side of his face again. “But not like—I fully intended that it’d be a winnable situation. Not this—this—God. It is true, isn’t it? That hell is just repeating your failures over and over again.”

He sounded more than a little raw, and the way Derek jerked around to look at him made Stiles wonder if that was one of Peter’s nightly arguments with his dead niece. Even Chris looked a little startled, over in the corner.

“Well, I think we were all assuming that we’d have to do this at some point,” Stiles said, shrugging. “I guess we just should’ve come up with a better plan faster, but it’s not like we haven’t been here before. Me and Lydia, anyway.”

“So that’s your plan?” Derek said. “Sit here and wait and let them kill us?”

“As opposed to sit out in the woods, where there’s no fire or hot food or bed, and wait?” Lydia said acidly.

Derek gaped at her for a second. Then he started to say something, getting up—Peter’s hand shot out and caught his shoulder, and forced him back down. It left Peter’s whole arm trembling violently, so he had to cradle it to keep his hand from smacking into the side of the crate he was on, but he didn’t stop looking at Stiles.

“You don’t want to die,” he said. “You’ve never struck me as that type.”

Stiles didn’t reply right away. He looked at Lydia, but she wasn’t looking at him. Her back was stiff and she was scrubbing the dishes so hard that Chris was making tentative snatches at her hands, trying to save the plate before she broke it.

He looked back at Peter, who was not quite hopeful. Desperate, yeah, willing Stiles to speak, but Peter was picking up something, wasn’t feeling easy about it. Hell, even Derek looked uncomfortable.

“No. No, I’m pretty sure I’m going to live through this. I don’t really want any of you to die either,” Stiles finally muttered. “But no promises on that. We’ll just have to see when they get here.”

He got up and went into the bedroom. Didn’t close the door, so when he heard it moving, he turned around and sat down to face it. Lydia paused, then shut it the rest of the way. That wouldn’t keep the others from overhearing, but…well, he could tell from her face that she was past caring about that sort of thing, and he damn well didn’t. He was—he was just so tired, he thought.

“I think…I think we knew it was going to happen,” he said, as she came over. She bent over and he started to scoot back and make room, but then she caught his hands. So he stopped, and she just pulled herself over his lap and then wrapped her arms around his head. “Right? We knew. Whatever we did…”

“It was still worth it,” she said. She pulled his head back and looked down at him, and then shook his shoulders, fierce and uncompromising and just so—she loved him. She really did. “It _is_ worth it. It’ll be worth it. We made it work before, we’ll do it again. We survive, Stiles, we always have. You and me.”

“But we can’t leave. We said we wouldn’t,” he said. “And goddamn it, Lydia, I can’t. I don’t have another move in me. And if it goes—if I can’t—”

“That’s not going to happen.” Lydia held his head, then pressed their mouths hard together. It wasn’t a kiss so much as the seal on a vow, as strong as she could make it without spilling blood. “I won’t let it. I’ll be there. We know how to do it now, we’ve _done_ it and it’s been—”

“—it was _fine_ in that we both got out of it, but nobody else did,” Stiles snapped. He jerked his arms back. So she grabbed his shoulders, thinking he was trying to get up, and left him free to wave wildly at the other room. “And I don’t have it in me to do that again, either. Goddamn it, Lydia, they could be—they could be just people we met today and I couldn’t do it. I think the Alphas deserve this, and I’m still barely facing up to it. And…and they’re _not_ people we just met, and—”

She dropped down so that their heads were level, shaking him till he shut up, and then pressing her thumbs against his cheeks like she could channel some of her determination into him that way. Then she moved her hand so that he could see the ring on her finger. “Stiles. You won’t. I won’t let you. Do you hear me? _I won’t let you._ When you gave me this, I promised you that. I promised.”

“You can’t,” he said. “You can’t, because I swear to God, if I get up afterward and…you know, we’re not even trying to be good people. I don’t know why I can’t just…but I can’t. I can’t.”

“I know,” she said. She held his gaze for another second, hard and unswerving, and then she suddenly folded against him. Dropping her arm down over his back, resting her forehead against his temple, and he realized she was shaking as bad as he was. “I know, I know, I know. I can’t either. We said it was the last place, and I meant it, Stiles. I meant it. And I’ll make sure it is. No matter what happens, this is it.”

Her voice broke, and then she pressed her face so hard into the side of his that he wasn’t sure she could breathe. Stiles pulled at her, but when she didn’t move, he just…he wrapped his arm around her waist, and then twisted them over, so that they could curl up around each other on the bed. And just breathe, and wait.

* * *

The others came in after a while. Stiles heard Peter and Chris discussing it, right up against the other side of the door. He couldn’t make out every word, but judging from the insults, Peter seemed to have found out about how Chris had ended up a werewolf, and Chris only minded if Peter brought up his daughter.

Derek was the one who eventually opened the door. Neither Stiles nor Lydia had fallen asleep, but Lydia didn’t roll over to see, and Stiles didn’t lift his head till Peter sat down on the edge of the bed.

Peter paused, changed his mind entirely about what he’d been about to say, and then felt carefully at the mattress. “Why is it so warm?” he said.

“Hypocaust. Great-uncle was an architect and big on ancient Rome,” Stiles said.

“Oh,” Peter said. He withdrew his hand and looked about the room. “Now I wish I’d bothered to spy on the man.”

“You didn’t?” Chris said.

“This is a little out of the way for us,” Peter said, looking sharply at him. “And we had no reason to think we’d get a friendly reception. I don’t think he even knew about werewolves till the last couple months, but he generally shot first, then made his men check. Rather like _your_ father.”

Chris pressed his lips together, but just shook his head and went around to the other side of the bed. Derek stayed in the doorway, arms folded over his chest and glaring at everybody.

“Stiles,” Peter said, taking a deep breath. “Lydia. I…we were curious. That barrier you have up—”

“Even mountain ash wouldn’t keep them from tossing a lit match at us, or lighting the grass on the other side of it and letting the flames run through,” Stiles said. Then he grimaced as Peter winced, and Derek bit off a growl before abruptly jerking back into the other room. “I’m pretty sure Deucalion noticed the last time he was here that it doesn’t block everything. And if it did, we’d starve and die of thirst.”

“Which is probably what he’ll be threatening anyway,” Chris said. “The way the land lies, I don’t think he’d try fire. Wind blows towards town.”

“Well, I know it’s hell when I find _you_ comforting,” Peter said dryly. Then he took a deep breath, turning back to Stiles and Lydia. “Whatever you’re doing—”

“If you don’t know, you’ve got a lot better chance of surviving,” Stiles said. “Just—we’ve tried that before, all right? Telling people. And they always do things—they get themselves killed. Just listen to Lydia.”

“And don’t try and protect me,” Lydia said tartly. “I do know what I’m doing, and I don’t care what it looks like to you.”

Peter didn’t like that. He wanted to argue, and he wrestled with himself for a few minutes. Once he looked off into the other room, at something Derek was doing, and then he turned away, grimacing, only to look up sharply as Chris climbed into the bed.

“I’d say just let them have me, but that won’t save you,” Chris said. He hesitated, then drew himself up behind Stiles. “But if it does come down to that, I wouldn’t blame you.”

“We could’ve guessed as much,” Lydia muttered. She lifted her head, then put it down. Pushed her hand over Stiles so Chris shifted sharply, while Peter looked on with a mix of interest and irritation, and then she pulled Chris so that his face suddenly pressed into the back of Stiles’ shoulder. By the neck, from the way Chris stiffened. “But don’t _assume_ we want that. Understand?”

After a tense second, Chris nodded. Lydia let go of him, pulling her hand back, and then she twisted slightly over to raise her brows at Peter.

“I don’t think you need to worry about that with me,” Peter said, amused. He glanced into the other room again, then pulled his legs up onto the bed. At first he seemed to be settling for the spot behind Lydia, but then he kept crawling and ended up curling over the top of her and Stiles’ heads. Which put his head near Chris, though Peter shifted a little back when Chris sucked in his breath. “But I’m sorry. I…I like you, you know. Very much. And I am…I’d like to be able to take care of what I like. At least be more mindful of it than I used to be.”

“If wishes were horses,” Stiles said, shrugging. “Or cattle. And look, stop acting like it’s so strange we’re not yelling at you. What the hell would that do? You don’t even really know us.”

“And that is,” Peter said, his voice suddenly harsh and tight. “That’s why I’m sorry. And why—why I was foolish enough to keep your scent a little longer in the first place.”

He moved like he might jerk up. Stiles raised his head, but Peter was already lying back down. The man looked over, catching Stiles’ eye, and then stretched over. He picked Stiles’ hand off Lydia, held it for a second, and then turned it so he could press Stiles’ fingers against the side of his neck. Then he put his head down.

Peter’s grip was loose the whole time, and it loosened even more the moment his head touched the mattress, but Stiles kept his hand there for a few seconds. Long enough to see Peter close his eyes like it pained him.

Then he moved it back to Lydia’s shoulder. He gave that a squeeze, then just let his head fall back.

* * *

Peter actually did fall asleep, an exhausted slumber so deep that he didn’t wake up when Stiles slid out of bed about an hour later. Chris was dozing but his eyes immediately snapped open. Lydia moved over to fill in the space, so he didn’t get up, but he watched as Stiles went out into the other room.

Derek was sitting with his back to the fire. “I already put some more wood on,” he said.

“You know what a hypocaust is?” Stiles said. Then he winced. “Sorry, not that I think you’re an idiot. Just…it’s not really part of California or werewolf education, last I checked.”

“Well, Peter and I have been sharing one room for a few years, and he likes that kind of thing,” Derek said dryly. He had his hands clasped between his knees, but he moved them out and put them down on either side of him, leaning over so that Stiles could put a kettle over the fire. “And I guess we have to talk about something.”

Stiles hummed, then sat down on the hearth next to him. “Hey, so since things are about to get really bad, can I ask something I’ve been wondering about you two?”

Derek flicked a look at him that was equal parts wary and resigned.

“There’s one bed,” Stiles said. “I mean, your bed. Yours and Peter’s.”

“We’re pack,” Derek said. Then he nodded at the bedroom. “ _You’re_ pack with Argent. At least, he acts like it, and you two aren’t exactly telling him not to.”

“We also, you know, fuck him,” Stiles said.

Derek pressed his lips together, then put his head back and stared at the ceiling for a second. He tapped his fingers irritably against the hearthstone. “If you’re asking if this is why I’m not as happy about you two as Peter is, that’s not why.”

“So yes?” Stiles said.

“You’re so goddamn annoying,” Derek snapped. He ran his hand over his head, then pinched the bridge of his nose. “And you don’t make any sense. And now I think Peter’s right, and that’s all just to keep us from noticing what’s really going on with you.”

Stiles shrugged as he dug out a piece of string, then knotted the ends to make a loop. “And that is?”

“That you’re terrified,” Derek said. He paused, but he wasn’t looking at Stiles. He was looking at the window, his brow furrowing briefly as he concentrated. But it must not have been anything, because he turned away from that and back to Stiles. “Well, that’s what I think, though Peter thinks—”

He stopped. His lips moved for another second, then went as still as the rest of him.

“It’s not what you think,” Stiles said after a long silence. He toyed with his string, then went through a half-hearted game of cat’s cradle. “We’re not afraid of the Alphas.”

“We aren’t either,” Derek said, hard and defensive. Then he looked away, and his voice softened. “Worrying about getting killed isn’t the same as being afraid of it. It’s just—by the time they showed up, things were already…you watch everybody you know die, or get hurt, or just…make bad decisions because they’re scared or bitter or angry, or all of those, and you know it’s your fault…”

“Nothing left to be afraid of, is there,” Stiles said. He dropped a loop as Derek’s nails dragged on the hearthstone, but didn’t look up. And then he just slipped the string off his fingers and coiled that up. “That why you’re not still arguing we should at least try and run for it? Or break out the weapons and turn this place into a fortress?”

Derek snorted. He’d hunched over again, his elbows resting against his knees, hands touching at the fingertips and face almost touching them. Now he looked over at Stiles. “What, with Peter only walking because of the Nemeton, and Argent barely better than an omega, and so fucked up he’s actually being nice to us? And holing up—we’re already doing that. If you didn’t mean to fight, you’d just throw us all out.”

“Maybe we’re going to just let them kill us,” Stiles said.

“No. No, I don’t buy that anymore.” And Derek not only sounded very firm about it, he looked annoyed when Stiles gave him a disbelieving glance, as if Stiles _wouldn’t_ know his own state of mind better. “Look, I think Peter gets a lot of things wrong, but he’s never gotten things about magic wrong. He thinks you two have something up your sleeve, then I…and you’re not the kind who just lets people kill them. I’d know, believe me.”

Stiles looked down at the string looped around his hand. He stuck his other hand into it, yanked it till, till he could see a few of the fibers snapping, and then he flicked it off both hands. “And here I thought you didn’t like me either.”

“I didn’t know you, and nobody around here likes anybody,” Derek said. Just a plain, simple statement, right before he leaned over.

Their mouths did touch, but Stiles didn’t think he’d call it a kiss. It was—it was too quick for it, but also too—too intense, as brief as it was. It felt like Derek was doing something else besides lust, something that ran a lot deeper and fiercer. And Derek didn’t stop either, but kept pushing, his mouth grazing along Stiles’ jaw before he settled with his forehead leaning against the side of Stiles’ neck, his cheek on Stiles’ shoulder. His breath rolled in a long, warm stream down the front of Stiles’ chest, then sleeked coolly back up as he inhaled. The tip of his nose brushed up along Stiles’ neck.

He drew back. He might have been about to say something—his mouth moved a little—but Stiles had his hand up and Derek’s eyes flicked over to it. He hesitated, and then turned his head into it as Stiles wrapped that hand around the side of his throat.

“So, you trust us yet?” Stiles said.

Derek grinned. It wasn’t that far off the first smile he’d given Stiles, all sharp teeth and bloody reckoning, but it wasn’t Stiles’ blood he was after. That was the difference.

“I think I know you a little now,” he said. “Let’s leave it at that.”

“Fair enough,” Stiles said, and then got up, just as Lydia stepped out of the bedroom.

“They’re coming,” she said, pulling the ring off her finger. She held it till she was sure Stiles had seen it, and then put it back on.

Peter was right behind her, with Chris hanging back in the doorway. They both looked curiously at Derek, who was still sitting on the hearth and now rubbing thoughtfully at the side of his neck. Chris sniffed, then turned away, shrugging, while Peter looked…not exactly fond of Derek, but a little less irritated with the man than usual.

“Right, well,” Stiles muttered. “Here we go. Again.”

He headed for the front door, and he had his hand on the handle when Lydia abruptly came up behind him and seized his arm. Her fingers were forcing into the soft inside of his elbow; Stiles hissed, then jerked free and turned around just in time to get shoved up against the door.

Lydia fisted one hand in his shirt, dug the nails of the other in a stinging semicircle around his ear, and kissed him like they’d run across the country together, like they’d seen each other through bad and worse and had somehow never ended up hating one another for it, like she would never find anybody who’d suit her as well as him again. She kissed him like she’d hate him forever if he didn’t come back.

“We’ll get married,” she said, pulling away. She held his head between her hands. “We’ll do it properly, we’ll get the license and rent out the church, and I will find someone in this godforsaken state who knows how to play wedding music.”

“I guess I have to say yes, then?” Stiles said. He pulled her hands off him, held them a second, and then pushed her back. Took a deep breath, pretending he hadn’t seen her eyes getting wet, and went outside.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You can read Derek's nonresponse to Stiles' question about him and Peter however you want.


	11. Chapter 11

The Alphas were out in full force, all five of them standing together, while their men—mounted and not, but all carrying guns—ringed the house. Torches and boxes of ammunition were being carried ostentatiously around, and there was even a Gatling gun.

“Seriously?” Stiles said, looking at it. “That’s just flaunting, now.”

“Well, if you have it, show it,” Kali said, smirking just shy of the boundary marker. She lifted her hand and wiped it back and forth against the barrier, as if cleaning a glass pane, and then flicked something through it: an unlit match. “And I don’t think there’s any confusion now about who has what. Or who.”

“You did have us going in circles for a while there, I will commend you for that,” Deucalion said. He stabbed his cane into the ground, then left it standing behind him as he walked up beside Kali. His eyes were red and he wasn’t even pretending at blindness. “However, as all things do, you and your wife’s deceptions have come to an end. You have till I count to ten to take down your barrier, or else I’m afraid your ranching dreams will be put to a very, _very_ painful end.”

Stiles looked at the ring of men around them. “As opposed to what will happen if we do like you say,” he said.

“Your wife might get to live,” said one of the twins, presumably Aiden.

Kali gave him an irritated look, but Deucalion just laughed and shook his head. “Oh, let’s not beat around the bush,” he said. “Take it down and we’ll make it quick. Don’t take it down and I suppose we’ll just have to see how long it takes. Though I will warn you, I’ve quite reached the end of my patience with you and your ghostly little tricks.”

“Yeah, I can tell,” Stiles said. He took a step forward.

The sound of all the guns cocking was like standing in the middle of an avalanche of clattering metal. Stiles grimaced, then sighed and slowly raised his hands. He showed that they were empty, then kept them up as he looked at Deucalion.

The man’s eyes narrowed briefly, but then he smiled and stepped back, graciously waving Stiles to come forward. Stiles took another step, which put him past the boundary marker. “So—all right, wait, that’s—”

Ennis had immediately shouldered forward, only to run right up against the barrier. He hit it hard enough to rattle him, shaking his head as he backed off. Then he whirled angrily, snarling and snapping his teeth in Stiles’ direction.

“So I was going to say, it doesn’t just come down,” Stiles said, looking from Ennis back to Deucalion, who was much less surprised. “Actually, you have to kill me.”

That _did_ surprise Deucalion. Kali, who’d turned to bark at some of the men, looked sharply over as well. Then she looked at Deucalion, who put up his hand, stopping both Ennis and a few overeager hunters from surging forward. He was still looking at Stiles, his surprise slowly fading into a thin, hard smile.

“I suppose you’ve already spoken to your wife?” he said. “We’re not completely uncivilized, after all.”

“Thanks, I’ve noticed,” Stiles said dryly. “And I did talk to Lydia.”

“Brave man,” Deucalion said. “Intelligent. I am very sorry to be taking you away from her, I’m sure she’ll miss you very badly. It will certainly be very difficult, being on her own.”

Stiles shrugged, and did not look over at the whispering twins. “Lydia’s Lydia. She usually manages. I’d ask if I get a choice of the method here, but—”

“No,” Deucalion said. Behind him, two men came up, one with a coil of rope and the other with a horse. “Unfortunately, I’ve learned my lesson the hard way about making sure with your kind. But I assure you, Kali’s become quite the expert with hangings. You’ll suffer only as long as necessary.”

They pulled up the horse below a sturdy branch off one of the trees, then pushed Stiles up onto its back, his hands tied behind him, a noose around his neck. The noose was snug, but Stiles noted that Kali only put ten coils into the knot rather than the traditional thirteen, and there only was a few feet of slack between that and the branch. So the knot wouldn’t have enough weight when it slammed into the back of his neck, and then the drop wouldn’t be far, all but ensuring he’d strangle slowly.

He looked down, and Kali had a large rock in one hand, while Ennis was flexing his claws with the other. “Expert in Nemetons now, too?” Stiles said.

“Oh, no, not really,” Deucalion said, stepping back. He pulled his cane from where it’d still been standing in the ground, then produced a handkerchief and began to wipe the dirt from the tip. We killed the last few druids using their own methods—just a little poetic justice, to be honest. But I noticed that the number of apparitions in the woods decreased significantly afterward, and I have no reason to believe it won’t be the same now.”

The horse shifted nervously, tossing its head as the torchlight caught on Ennis’ claws, and its movement tightened the rope around Stiles’ neck. He fought the urge to cough and made himself breath in very slowly to compensate.

He looked over at the house. The windows were dark—Lydia had probably doused the fire right after locking the door—but he thought he could make out a few shapes against one. Stiles grimaced, then looked back at the alphas. She’d keep them in order, he reminded himself.

“True,” he rasped. “Though one last thing you might want to know.”

Deucalion sighed. “Yes,” he said.

“We’re not druids,” Stiles said, and then he slammed his heels into the horse’s sides, before the man standing behind it could hit it.

The horse bolted forward. The back of the saddle caught behind him, then smacked roughly at his ass before dragging under and free, and there was that moment where he was falling. Staring at the smirking faces around him, the viciousness in their eyes, and—

—Scott’s face pushed between two of them, mouth stretched wide, one hand flung out towards Stiles, _no_ —

—there was that upward tug and then Stiles blacked out, but he did try to scream first. He did.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hanging, if done correctly, is actually a quick, presumably relatively painless way to die. The problem is how to do it so that the hanged person's neck breaks immediately upon their body dropping to the end of the rope. If they don't fall fast enough--if the drop is too short, for example--they'll strangle slowly. If they fall too quickly--well, they'll die immediately, but there have also been incidents where their head pops off with the force of it.
> 
> So that's the reason why, when you see a noose, the knot has all those coils (traditionally, unlucky thirteen). The coils are there to give the knot extra weight, so that when the person falls and the knot slams into the back of their neck, it'll help snap the spine.


	12. Chapter 12

“—out!” Lydia was shouting. “I command you—”

Stiles stumbled backwards. His hands were wet, and full of long things with sharp points and jagged edges, which spilled out to roll under his feet as he tried to remember where he was, what he’d been doing.

Grass. Grass and blood. Trees. He was looking at woods, ones filled with bodies. Dead men all over the place, torn apart, entrails strung over bushes and limbs wrenched out to show stark white cartilage amid the dark red tatters of flesh. One of them had a strange head, misshapen with pointed ears, blood-matted fur down both sides of the face, broken stumps in its mouth and the tooth ends sticking out of its mangled throat. A cane was driven into its chest like a flagpole.

His head—it always felt terrible, like somebody had scooped it hollow and then filled it up again with acid and burning air. He put his hand up and then fell to his knees and one arm, violently throwing up. Blood and soft bits, things he didn’t want to look at, came up along with the vomit.

“Stiles?” Lydia said, her voice suddenly soft and hesitant. “Stiles?”

He turned around. Broken door, he saw. Great slabs of earth turned up all around it, mixed in with shattered chunks of the stones from the front steps. Pieces had been taken out of the sides of the doorway, while the planks that made up the door had been—they looked like they’d been smashed, and then parts from the top and bottom had been wrenched off. Lydia was looking over the splintered edge of what remained, a book in one hand, a candle clutched in the other—her fingers were half-sunk into its sides, she held it so tightly—and behind her moved other people.

Stiles shook his head, then touched his face with his bloody hands. Nausea spun him and he caught at the ground, spitting out more vomit and blood, and then he swore as he felt—it was like a lightning bolt, and it locked him up with spasms. His jaw didn’t want to move—no, it did, just not the way _he_ wanted it to—he garbled his words, then nearly fell on his face as the pressure vanished.

Lydia had already backed away from the door. She was chanting furiously in Latin, her voice rising as Stiles’ body slowly drew itself back up onto its feet. He was moving smoothly, too smoothly, he knew he shouldn’t be moving like that, but he couldn’t stop. He couldn’t even _feel_ it, and God, he knew he was slipping out again.

“He’s coming back,” somebody in the house hissed. “His eyes turned again, you need to—”

She dropped the book and held up the candle, her chanting not ceasing for an instant, but then Stiles smashed himself into the door and the hinges screamed, nails not coming out but _ripping_ , and Lydia—

He could see himself reflected in her wide eyes. Pink foam all over his mouth and dripping down his throat and chest, blood everywhere, so much so that he couldn’t see where his clothes ended and his skin began. And eyes in his head that weren’t his.

Stiles fell backwards, not because he wanted to—though he was fighting for it, fighting as hard as he could—but because he needed to coil up for another blow. But before he could, Lydia flung open what was left of the door and then plunged out into the open. Her sleeve tore—he thought it caught on the door, but then she slapped out behind her. Someone else’s hand showed, and then Chris pulled himself around the jamb to look at Stiles. Derek was briefly visible as Lydia’s head dipped: he was crouched right behind her, fangs and claws out.

“ _No_ ,” she hissed, shaking her head. She kept batting the others back, even as Chris tried to catch at her skirts. She didn’t have the candle anymore. “Stiles. Stiles. It’s me. You remember—”

“I _do_ remember you,” Stiles’ voice said.

“Not you,” Lydia said, with an exasperated sniff that didn’t match the fear in her eyes. “No, Stiles, damn it, you’re in there, and—”

Stiles wrenched at himself, getting his hands and head down. The torn turf sunk easily under his fingers, so that they went in to the knuckles, but it’d let them out just as easily if—he shook his head, trying not to look at Lydia’s skirts rustled. “Fuck, fuck, get it out,” he choked.

“I’m trying. I’m trying, but you need to push,” Lydia snapped. “Push and pull, we did it before, we _did_ it, now goddamn it, _push_ —”

He jerked up and Lydia spat Latin at him like she was flinging stones. The words hit him like stones—he could feel welts swelling up, and he dropped back onto his knees in agony. He…he clawed at himself, pulling his hands out of the dirt and clutching at his legs, then at his sides, trying to keep his body from shifting away from her. But it hurt. It hurt so, so bad, and even though he’d gone through it before, that never made it any easier.

Opposite. It made it harder, remembering how bad it would have to get. And he wanted to do it, he did, he wanted to push and he was trying. But it was so bad. Every time it took little pieces of him, every time he had less to push with, and this time—they’d known, they’d known, that was why they’d come here, where things were so strange and terrible they’d figured nobody would notice them. They’d come thinking they could keep from having to do this again, because they’d known. Stiles couldn’t make it another time.

Lydia sucked in her breath, sobbing, and she almost was a second late with the next word. His head wrenched up and he could feel the demon coming out—she got to the word in time, but she was failing too, her hands shaking as she shoved them into her knees. She knelt on the ground in front of him, putting everything she had into what she was saying—because it wasn’t just the words themselves. It was belief, it was faith—it was hope. And they had so little of that left, the both of them.

“Come back,” somebody, Chris or Derek, called desperately. “His eyes are changing again, Lydia, you have to—”

She flung her arm out to the side, both refusing them and telling them not to come after her. “I told you,” she snapped, as Stiles collapsed, exhausted, to the ground. “I told you. You can’t say it, I have to. If you try, it won’t work, because you weren’t there, you didn’t help call it up, it’s only the people who called it—”

“I can’t, Lyds,” Stiles gasped. “I can’t, I can’t, he’s coming back, just—”

“Just shoot us if it gets that bad,” Lydia snapped, not looking away. She slowly swung her arm around till it was in front of her, and then she used it to crawl over to him. 

He forced his head away, but she grabbed both of his hands and squeezed them, and he had to look at her. Tear-streaked face, disheveled hair, smile as fierce as it was despairing. And—he looked at her hands, then swore and tried to let her go, but she wouldn’t let him. “Your ring—I’ll kill you without—”

“This was the _last_ place,” she said. “We said that. And Peter promised. I told him, if it doesn’t work, I gave him the ring, I saw him put it in the gun. Now, listen—”

Stiles shook his head, but he didn’t have the strength to push her away. “It’s coming back—”

Lydia dropped back into the exorcism chant without pause. At first her voice rang out strongly, but the first time he wrenched at her hands, she almost cried out in pain and broke the chant. She recovered, but her voice was lower, shakier. And then he crushed her fingers and twisted her wrists, flinging them both down onto the ground.

He could see the doorway as they went over. Peter was there, with a rifle held up—Derek was pinning Chris to the side of the door, both of them looking on in horror—but he wasn’t shooting. Stiles had his hands on Lydia, he was moving them to her neck, Peter could see that and Peter was snarling, his lips drawn back from his teeth, his eyes glowing blue, his finger on the trigger. But he wasn’t shooting. He jerked up the rifle as Stiles hauled Lydia over himself, but no bullet came crashing through her.

And Lydia couldn’t get out the words anymore. She had her hands locked around Stiles’ wrists, gasping out one more word, but he was squeezing her throat too much and she wouldn’t be able to say any more and—

“Out,” said another voice, clear and firm.

Lydia was plucked out of Stiles’ grip as if he had paper for hands, and then she was gasping on her knees, clutching at her bruised throat. Another woman was standing with her, hands on Lydia’s shoulders, both holding her back and shielding her as she still reached for Stiles.

“Allison?” Chris choked out.

“I command thee,” Scott said, bending over Stiles, holding him down as the demon raged and writhed in his body. He smiled, and then brushed his hand over Stiles’ forehead. “Get out.”

And it felt like every bone in Stiles’ body broke as Scott drove his hand into Stiles’ chest.


	13. Chapter 13

They’d have to do something about all the dead bodies, Stiles thought. He could hear scavengers rustling around outside, barking and cawing. Every so often, Derek or Peter would step outside and roar, but that only scared them off for a few minutes at a time. And it was on the chilly side, but in the morning the sun would come up and heat the corpses, and then they’d all start to smell.

“We need to bury them,” Lydia muttered. She lifted her hand, paused as the other three people in the house all started sharply, and then put her head back on Stiles’ shoulder instead of pushing the hair from her face. “What? We do. And don’t say at the Nemeton, that’d just be foolish.”

Peter was the first to recover. He moved away from where he and Derek had been dismantling chests for boards to cover the broken door, towards the hearth where Chris was warming up some coffee. “Well, forgive me for being a fool, but—”

“Because we don’t know what that damned thing is now,” Stiles snapped. “It’s sure as hell not a Nemeton, who ever heard of a goddamn Nemeton helping—God, just…”

“You should drink something, at least,” Chris broke in. He hesitated, but when Stiles and Lydia just looked at him, he went so far as to toss a handful of rags at them. “Clean up. Just…if you’ve got any injuries under there, we should treat them.”

“He doesn’t,” Lydia said tiredly. She rubbed her cheek against Stiles’ shoulder, then dragged her head up and pushed her hands over her face. “He never does. Not afterward. The demon takes care of all of that.”

“Why do you think I’ve got to die to bring it out?” Stiles said under his breath. “It likes starting from scratch.”

“Is it coming back?” Derek asked. Peter hissed at him, while Chris narrowed his eyes. Derek bristled, but jerked his chin up at both of them. Then he turned to Stiles and Lydia, his hand going up behind him to slap a nail in place. “Look, just—what the hell happened? And who were they?”

Chris jerked, then pulled his hands in to his stomach. He was gripping the wrist of one and the nails of the gripping hand were white, and so was the flesh they were digging into. Which got him a questioning look from Peter, but Chris shook his head and then shoved himself back against the side of the fireplace. He was going to let Stiles or Lydia take it.

“Our friend,” Stiles sighed. “My best friend, my whole life. Scott. That was Scott. And Chris’ daughter, and I don’t know how she got here, but Scott….well, I killed him.”

“You didn’t try to,” Lydia said. She was sharp about it, as always, but there was a dragging end to her voice, showing how often she’d had to say it. “We…when we were back ho—back East. Everyone was playing around with spirit boards and talking to the dead, and we—”

Stiles shook his head, sensing the question Peter was going to ask. “We didn’t know anything. Lydia didn’t even know she was a banshee. We figured it was just a parlor trick. Except it wasn’t, when we did it, and…and we kept doing it, because turned out we were _good_ at it.”

“Nothing serious. We weren’t asking for the ghost of Alexander the Great or anything like that,” Lydia said dismissively. “Just gossip, local scandals, frippery like that. I was…well, I wasn’t formally engaged, but there was an understanding, and it was certainly expected.”

“He cheated on her,” Stiles said. “We found out, and we were just trying to…to scare him.”

Lydia fingered a bloodstain on her skirt. “Not even that. Just humiliate him. Show him for the spineless piece of trash he was. Except…we didn’t get a ghost, when we did the séance that time. We got something else. _Stiles_ got it.”

“It killed our family, almost all our friends, before we taught ourselves enough to get rid of it.” Stiles scratched the side of his face, then flicked off the dried blood from his fingers. “Just me and Lydia and Scott were left. Didn’t exactly look good. The rest of the town wanted to—”

“They couldn’t throw us in jail, there was never any proof, anything like that,” Lydia said.

“—so, you know, we left. But once you let a demon in, it doesn’t like to be kept out,” Stiles said. He scratched his face again, harder, till Lydia reached over and pulled down his hand, wiping his fingertips off in her skirt. “It took a couple tries before we got it down. And if you know anything about exorcisms, you know that even a perfect one, it’s not forever and ever.”

“Exorcisms are as much about willpower as they are about actual magic,” Peter said to Derek, before Derek could ask. He was surprisingly quiet about it, judging from the flicker of surprise on Derek’s face. “You have to sustain your faith in them, or their power will falter, and it can get back in.”

Stiles snorted. “Yeah, and especially if you invite them back. I mean—it’s not like we wanted to. But Lydia doesn’t stop being a banshee just because we stopped doing séances, and people don’t stop calling you a murderer just because you’ve left town. We probably should’ve gone farther, but we were still learning.”

“People kept finding you out,” Chris said.

This time, Lydia made the contemptuous noise. “People kept _looking_ for us. We didn’t want to do anything but put it behind us and give it all up. But it seems that once you call up a demon, you’ve got a target on your back.”

“Hunters,” Derek said, with a glance at Chris, who didn’t even notice.

“Yeah, those, but also a lot of people who just want you to kill everybody for them, like if you did that once, that means you’re good at it,” Stiles said. He shifted and flakes of dried blood and mud came off his legs. “Means you’re some expert at revenge or something. When we ended up this way in the first place because we fucked that up.”

“And then, another massacre, another town that hates you,” Lydia sighed, tilting her head. She went to push some of the hair from her face, but her hand caught. When she finally got her fingers free, a few broken strands and a long wooden splinter fell away from them. “It was a mob, just like all the other times, but Scott got in the way. I don’t know why. He was never going to get to Stiles in time, and anyway, if he really wanted to help, he should’ve come—”

“Because he knew that I hate being possessed more than I hate the goddamn people who are always coming after us, and he was trying to keep me from ending up in the middle of a pile of body parts again,” Stiles snapped. He jerked half-up, then dropped back down as his limbs all spasmed. The demon’s healing powers didn’t extend to plain exhaustion. “He just—he was trying to save me. Because he does—did—he always does that. And then I killed him.”

Lydia put her hand on his arm as soon as he’d seated himself again. “The mob killed Stiles, and then the demon in his body killed Scott.”

“It was still me,” Stiles said. “If I hadn’t made him come to that séance in the first place, just so we could have enough people—he never would’ve had any idea. He would’ve just not ever come with us.”

“It’s Scott, Stiles,” Lydia said, her voice rising sharply. “He goes after you no matter what. And the proof is—”

“So he followed you as a ghost, too,” Derek interrupted. He tensed a little, more from how Lydia glared at him than from how Peter did, but he didn’t retreat. “And…and what? Because it looked like he was helping you. One second you’re strangling her, and the next he’s pulling some—black fog—out of you. And you’re not trying to kill anybody anymore.”

Lydia drew a deep breath, but then…didn’t say anything. And when Stiles looked over, she was looking right back at him. Her hand slid down his arm to wrap around his wrist, and then she looked away, rubbing tiredly at her eyes.

“It looks like he’s been following us this whole time,” Stiles finally explained. “It’s just—it wasn’t till we got here that he was strong enough. Because of the Nemeton, and how it makes the dead stronger. But he’s done something to it too, so he could do even more on this side of things, I don’t know, he’s made it do things we weren’t asking it to do—”

“We’ve never heard of a ghost doing that, and believe me, once we realized we couldn’t run far enough, we learned everything we could about this,” Lydia muttered.

“Anyway, he and Allison—she must have been following her dad, and then she and Scott met up, I guess. And they’ve been trying to get our attention with—we saw things, we heard voices, and then I thought he brought back my hat…but we thought they were _angry_ so we were warding them off, much as we could. But that wasn’t…” Stiles paused, then hit himself. He half-saw Chris start forward in alarm, and Peter’s mouth abruptly thinned, but he ignored all of that. His leg—his leg really hurt. Which meant this was real. “…yeah. He kicked out the demon.”

“He _always_ goes after Stiles,” Lydia said. She sounded a little odd, a little low and thick, but when Stiles tried to look at her, she put her head on his shoulder. Then turned it so her face was completely hidden. “Always. God, even when he’s dead…”

Stiles bit the side of his mouth. He didn’t feel up to talking, even though he could hear that Lydia could use it. He just wasn’t sure that, if he tried, he’d sound any steadier. So he just…he put his arm around her, and then tightened it as she nestled into his side.

“So is _that_ for good?” Derek asked. Then he let out a curt snarl at Peter. “I’m still here, aren’t I? Stop looking—I just want to know. Just so I can—so we can try to not do this again?”

“I’d almost forgotten how badly optimism suits you,” Peter said after a long moment. His sarcasm was rather subdued, and he further softened it by offering Derek the board in his hand, before turning back to Stiles and Lydia. “But he does have a point. I don’t think we’ll be dealing with any more threats tonight, but—”

“Well, you still have Lydia’s ring, right?” Stiles muttered. “Not that you did much with it. So you’d better not have lost it. We only managed to find one of those.”

Peter drew in his breath sharply. He lifted his hand, then let it fall to his knee. The slap of it made Derek start, but he just kept working at boarding up the broken door. Chris, on the other hand, moved around so that he had either a clear shot at Peter, or at Stiles and Lydia.

“Forgive me for still being capable of emotional attachment,” Peter said, with a contemptuous look at Chris. He rubbed his hand over his knee a few times, then dropped forward onto both hands, crawling over till he was by Stiles’ and Lydia’s heads. He didn’t have the rifle and made a point of looking at where it was leaning against the wall, out of reach, before he curled himself up like a dog. “I don’t want to use it. In fact, I’d dearly like to know if that could be avoided. And if that takes more dealings with the Nemeton, and with your friend’s ghost, well…”

“We’ve done worse,” Derek broke in, surprisingly enough. He stepped back from the door, glancing it over, and then turned around. He took a few steps forward, then hesitated.

Chris sighed and reached behind himself. He took the kettle off the fire, then poured out a few cups of coffee. Held one out for Derek, who stretched his arm out so he didn’t have to get any closer than necessary to take it, and who then sat down on the floor to drink it.

“We don’t know,” Lydia finally said, very tired and very low. She moved her head on Stiles’ shoulder, presumably so that she could see Peter. “He just disappeared when the demon did. Him and Allison. We don’t know what they did, we don’t know if they’ll be back—we don’t know about the demon either.”

“So for all we know, I might’ve just gotten Scott killed a second time,” Stiles said. He rubbed at his face, ignoring Lydia, and then he gave in and let her scrub at the blood on his cheek with his thumb.

When ‘Allison’ came up, Chris stiffened, his eyes dropping to the unserved cups. He put his finger out and almost touched the rim of one, then curled his hand up into a fist that he rubbed over his thigh. “I never thought I’d see her again in the first place,” he said. His voice tightened up so much that he had to force a breath at the end. “So…can’t ask for more, for me. But—but it is clear now. The town’s clear. They brought everybody out with them, and now they’re all dead. And it’ll be a while before word gets out.”

“You looking to move to town?” Derek said.

“Are you?” Chris said, looking up.

“Stop it, would you? The town matters. We’ll have to deal with whoever runs it, so we might as well use our say in that,” Peter said. He moved so he was close enough his body heat was filtering into Stiles’ hair, then relaxed again. “But that’s in the future, anyway. The question right now is, do you two have any reason to leave?”

Stiles looked up at him. Peter looked back, far more solemn than his tone was letting on. More uncertain too, his eyes flicking over and over Stiles’ face, urgently searching for something, but he was keeping himself to that. No attempt at persuasion. Not even going to point out that he might still have to stay, that whatever Scott had done to the Nemeton might not have fixed him. That even if the demon was gone, he and Derek were two betas with only the near-omega son of their family’s killer as a possible other ally. And people would come now that the Alphas were dead. They’d come, and they’d see what they could get, just like everybody else.

“Demon or not,” Stiles said, and Peter tensed.

He was afraid, and so were Derek and Chris, both of them perfectly still and silent, waiting on the rest. And none of them even twitching towards that rifle, holding the one thing that might stop Stiles. They weren’t afraid of _dying_ , Stiles thought.

It’d been a long time since he’d seen anybody besides Lydia look like that. “Demon or not,” he said again. “We were always planning to stay. It’s just—”

“You have to stop, sooner or later,” Lydia said. She was looking at them too, and seeing the same thing. Her hand slipped down and wrapped around Stiles’. “And whatever happens…happens.”

She put her head down, resting her forehead against his. He put his arm up, first around her shoulders, and then higher, so that he could twist his fingers in her hair, breaking through the stiff blood dried into it.

“Get married,” he said. “Actually learn how to run a ranch.”

“Teach myself gardening after all, I suppose,” she said, glancing around them. “Keep a few werewolves.”

“I always thought this area might be better-suited to sheep than to cattle,” Peter said. He moved again, so that he was touching the tops of their heads. Lydia put up a hand and he stopped, then let out a long, low sigh, like somebody finally going to bed after a full day. “What? Werewolves and animal husbandry aren’t mutually exclusive. Quite the contrary.”

“It is better for sheep,” Chris said. He drank down a cup of coffee, then came over, wiping his mouth off with the back of his hand. He didn’t lie down, but the way he settled behind Stiles, he wasn’t planning to go anywhere else any time soon. “All the towns north of here, that’s how they’re making their money now that the trappers have hunted out most of the prize pelts.”

Derek stayed by the hearth. He still looked a little dubious, when Stiles checked on him, but then he picked up an unused piece of crate and started scratching at it with his claws. It took a couple minutes, but a rough shape started to emerge: not a spiral, but a complete circle, with two smaller circles nested inside it. 

“And try to talk to dead people,” he said, raising his brows at Stiles. “Right?”

“Yeah,” Stiles said slowly. When Derek didn’t flinch, he put his head back down. “For now…I guess just leave out a cup, in case Scott is still around. He used to make the coffee.”

Peter made a noise like he might ask something, but then didn’t. After a look at him, Derek shrugged and pushed one of the remaining cups away from the others. A loud groan made him start and look up and around, but…it just seemed to be the wind, blowing into the gaps at the boarded-up door. He settled back, still wary, and went back to his carving as he kept watch, and the rest of them slept.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Spirit boards are what we now call the Ouija game. They first became popular during the Spiritualism craze, which started during the 1840s in New York and then spread across the country.


	14. Epilogue

The sun glinted off Lydia’s ring as she gave a flustered Erica a consoling pat on the arm, and then helped the girl pick up the linens she’d just dropped. Her old one had been so bent and scratched, once they had pried it out of the rifle, that Lydia now wore it on a chain around her neck, under her clothes. The one on her finger now was one of the Hale family heirlooms, a massive thing of gold and gemstones that Peter had presented to them after they’d gotten their marriage license.

“I can’t tell whether she’s looking more at that, or at Lydia’s dress,” Derek muttered. “I think everyone’s wondering how she breathes in that.”

He and Stiles were waiting outside the hotel with the wagon, which was overflowing with furniture and silverware and pretty much anything else that a hunter might have used. Most of them had stayed at the hotel, and now that they weren’t around, the proprietors wanted to refurbish the place top to bottom, get out all that bad luck. It still wasn’t too clear how all those horribly mauled bodies had shown up in the river, and the townspeople by and large didn’t want to take any chances.

So Erica aside, they weren’t really speaking too much to Stiles and the others either, although they were polite when addressed. And like Derek pointed out, that didn’t stop them from watching. “It’s a good question,” Stiles said, following one gawker as he almost stepped off the boardwalk and flattened himself in the dust. “I don’t even know, and I helped lace her into that.”

Derek glanced at him, then snorted and climbed off the bench into the back of the wagon. He was messing around with some of the lamps they’d taken off the hotel, rewrapping their glass tops in bedsheets, when Chris emerged with one last box of scavenged weapons. The hunters had left behind a lot, and the hotel wanted it all out so badly that they’d turned it over for free.

Erica started back, nearly stumbling into a graciously-smiling Lydia, and then the two of them were very close together in the doorway, whispering as Erica kept glancing at the box in Chris’ hands. She was nervous, of course, but there was an unusual recklessness in how openly curious she was.

But Lydia had always had a good eye for that sort of thing. Stiles turned around on the bench, leaving her to it, and ducked his head so he could see how Chris and Derek were wedging in that last box. “Watch that, that’s the lamp she actually likes,” he said.

Chris obligingly nudged the box over, while Derek just rolled his eyes and backed out of the way. He scooted up till he was by Stiles again, crouching in a small space between the crates and the back of the driver’s bench. “It looks like all the other ones,” he muttered. “How would you know?”

Stiles laughed and put his hand on the back of Derek’s neck. He let it rest there for a second, then slid it around, leaving his thumb on Derek’s nape while his fingertips dropped into the front of Derek’s shirt-collar. Derek tilted back into it, the side of his head brushing at Stiles’ arm, but he still looked irritated.

“Look, rule of thumb—let Lydia have what she wants,” Stiles said, bending down. He bumped at Derek’s temple with his forehead, looking at the lamp. Then at Chris, who was dusting off his hands before climbing out onto the backboard, and last, at the canvas wall that was between them and Erica’s nervous giggle. “And then you’ve got time for what you want.”

Which he got out just a hair before Derek twisted around, lipping briefly but fiercely at his mouth. More than a little risky, what with being in broad daylight, and the town already thinking they were, at the very least, worse than the Alphas, but Stiles let it happen.

For a second, and then he pushed away and turned back around, just as Lydia came down the hotel steps. He left his hand on Derek’s neck, absently rubbing with his thumb as the other man sighed and reluctantly settled. 

“Well, if you’re feeling lonely or something, we’ve about got enough stock now to think about hiring more hands,” Stiles said. He moved over as Chris gave Lydia a hand up onto the driver’s bench—Lydia stroked the inside of Chris’ wrist before she let him go, to a quick flicker of glow in his eyes—and then picked up the reins with his free hand. “Maybe a cook, too. Lydia’s a little busy with her garden these days.”

“Chris cooks,” Derek said, slouching against Stiles’ hand. He and Peter both still looked askance at their third werewolf, but they showed up a lot earlier the nights when Chris was in the kitchen, as opposed to Stiles or Lydia.

Lydia looked irritably over her shoulder. “Chris needs to be at the garden with me.”

Derek made a face, but he subsided. In fact, they all went a little quiet for the first few steps out of town. What had happened to the Nemeton—the centerpiece of Lydia’s garden—was still a mystery, since by the time they’d gotten out there, all that was left of it was a splintered, blackened stump, as if lightning had squarely blasted it. Well, that…and a few green shoots sticking up in the middle of the stump fragments, once they’d dug some at the ash.

It wasn’t dead. It still had a hold on Peter, albeit one that was slowly loosening: he could go about twice as far from it now, and his scars were disappearing, though they couldn’t tell whether that might be down to less hiding and more food. And the woods were still haunted. Anyone who went out in it without taking precautions was likely to hear and see people from their past that they’d happily forgotten.

As for people who they might want to see again…neither Scott nor Allison had shown up again. But Chris had reported a few odd dreams, and Lydia had repeatedly tranced and then they’d found her at the Nemeton shoots with a bucket of water, so they’d given in and were carefully nursing the new tree along. No one was sure what would happen as the tree grew, but taking care of it seemed like the safest thing to do.

Nobody was sure that the demon wouldn’t be back either, since the only way to check would be to try and call it up. But nobody wanted that. And—and for the first time in a very, very long time, ‘nobody’ was more than just Stiles and Lydia.

“What about them?” Derek said. He leaned his head out, wedging it briefly between Stiles and Lydia, and then nodded at the mail stage standing in front the post office.

Now that the Alphas were gone, incoming travelers had started to trickle in and a fresh group had just arrived. They had that bewildered, dust-ridden look to them, awkwardly pushed together because a couple days trapped in a stagecoach felt friendlier than an unknown town. Not that impressive. Though there also were the two men working on unhitching the horses from the stage. They were quick and efficient about it, and good at keeping their heads down while they were at it, clearly veterans of the Alphas’ reign over the town.

And curious, just like how Erica had been. They were looking.

Interest wasn’t enough, but Stiles glanced at Lydia, who gave the two a second, longer look.

“Maybe,” she said. She clicked her tongue to give warning to Chris, who was riding on the back of the wagon, and then she took the reins from Stiles and slapped them against the ox’s flank. “It’s a start, anyway.”

Stiles pulled a looped string from his pocket, pricked a drop of blood onto it, and then started playing around. One of the new travelers started sharply at nothing, going pale; when Stiles glanced back through the wagon, he could see Chris turning to look at the man, memorizing his face for further investigation. Then he turned back around, and found the curly, blond one of the pair tending the stage horses looking at him. He smiled and the man promptly ducked his head, then peeked again as the wagon rounded the corner.

“It wouldn’t hurt to get to know more people,” he said to Lydia, who snorted, but leaned into him. “We’re all neighbors now, after all.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This story took forever. I rarely have to throw out a story and start over from scratch, but with this one, I got 50K into a first start, but then it wasn't working out.
> 
> Anyway, it grew out of an offhand comment I made in one of the _Sustainable Management_ stories about what Old West California might've been like with pioneer werewolves warring for territory. This isn't part of that series, but from certain angles I guess you could consider it an alternate history of that series' ancestors.
> 
> Also, I wanted to write a story about Stiles and Lydia as an amoral pair traveling around the country, conning their way into town and then leaving a swath of destruction behind them (which yeah, sounds like yet another series of mine), but who have to settle in one place for some reason and slowly remember they have emotional attachments and all that difficult, squishy stuff. And who have to figure out how to live a lifestyle that they're not so instinctively good at. So honestly, this is more of a love letter to those two than to any other pairing in this.


End file.
